Abstract
After many years of "national awakening" and a very painful "liberation war", Latvia became an independent and non-occupied state in 1919-1920, for the first time in its history. Thus began a very new political process of nation-state building. While ethnic Latvians had to face many difficulties, the German Baltic also experienced a radical change in their situation. They lost many privileges that they benefited from, under the Tsarist rule, and were deprived of their economic power by the Land Reform Law, passed in September 1920. Nevertheless, they managed to remain the most organized and coherent national minority of Latvia during the independence period. Thus, one interesting research topic could be to study the cultural activities of the Baltic Germans in Latvia, because culture became one of the most relevant ways to express themselves and to affirm their new identity as a national minority in a nation-state.
