Jonas Vileišis
Jonas Vileišis (January 3,
1872 – June 1, 1942) was a Lithuanian
lawyer, politician, and diplomat.
Early life and career
Vileišis
was born in Mediniai, near Pasvalys
.
In 1892 he
graduated from the Šiauliai
gymnasium. During 1892-1894, he studied
physics and
mathematics
at
Saint Petersburg
University. Later he transferred to the study of
law, graduating in 1898. As a student he began
contributing to the newspapers
Varpas (
The Bell) and
Ūkininkas (
The Farmer). From
1896 to 1898 he was a member of the
Social Democratic Party of
Lithuania. After returning to Lithuania, he began practicing
law and joined the
12 Apostles organization, dedicated to
defending the right to use the
Lithuanian language in print, which was
banned at the time. In 1902 he participated in the creation of the
Lithuanian Democratic
Party.
After the
ban on Lithuanian language
was lifted in 1904, Vileišis obtained permission to publish the
newspaper
Lietuvos
Ūkininkas and was its editor-in-chief from 1905 to 1906.
From 1907 to 1909, he served as the publisher of
Vilniaus žinios (
Vilnius
News) and, after it was banned, published and edited
Lietuvos Žinios
(
Lithuanian News). He was one of the organizers of the
Great Seimas of Vilnius in
1905, and an organizer of the
Lithuanian Science Society in
1907.
At the beginning of
World War I,
Vileišis co-founded a Lithuanian organization aimed at helping war
victims with agronomic and legal support, and became its chairman.
He was also an active member of the Lithuanian Committee. Six
schools were established by Vileišis in the Alanta district. As a
member of the Lithuanian Science Society he organized the
publication of school textbooks.
For distributing anti-German
fliers among teachers, he was jailed in the
Lukiškės
Prison
for six months and later to Germany for forced
labor. In Berlin
he managed
to escape from prison, and he went into hiding until he was given
permission to return to Lithuania.
Political career
From 1917 to 1920, Vileišis participated in the work of the
Council of Lithuania. He was
the only member to oppose the Declaration of Independence of
December 11, 1917, in which Lithuania promised to be Germany's
satellite. Vileišis was one of the four members of the Council to
resign on January 26, 1918, on the grounds that the Council of
Lithuania had no right to usurp the rights of the
Constituent Assembly of
Lithuania, and that its authority only applied to the
determination of Lithuania's future and model of the state. All
twenty members of the Council voted on
February 16 to the new edition brought by four
members (Jonas Vileišis,
Mykolas Biržiška,
Steponas Kairys and
Stanisław Narutowicz), that
returned with new edition of
Act of Independence of
Lithuania. A few days afterward, together with
Justinas Staugaitis and
Jurgis Šaulys, he left for Germany to
seek recognition of Lithuanian independence.
From 1917 to 1922 he was a member of the
Lithuanian Popular
Socialist Democratic Party; from 1922 to 1929 he was a member
of the
Lithuanian
Peasant Popular Union. In 1929 he resigned the post of Chairman
of the Central Committee and from the party.
He was invited to serve in the First
Cabinet of Lithuania, although he
refused. On December 18, 1918, he became Minister of Internal
Affairs in the Second Cabinet of Lithuania. While working as a
minister he organized municipalities, appointed physicians to every
county of Lithuania, and published laws governing
cooperatives and army recruitment. Vileišis
resigned, along with the entire cabinet, on March 12, 1919.
The Fourth Cabinet of Lithuania (June 12–October 2, 1919) appointed
Vileišis Minister of Finance. He prepared a plan for Lithuanian
currency reform, although it was not
implemented.
In 1919 he
was sent as an ambassador to the United States
, where he worked to obtain recognition of the state
de jure and establish financial and
trade relations. He also solicited donations from the
Lithuanian-American community,
collecting over 1.8 million US dollars; and more importantly, he
managed to unite the Lithuanian diaspora. In 1922 he was elected to
the
First Lithuanian parliament
(Seimas), and was a presidential candidate in the June 19, 1922
elections.
Mayor of Kaunas
From
September 30, 1921 until July 2, 1931, he served as mayor ( ) of
Kaunas
, the temporary capital of
Lithuania. Under his direction Kaunas grew rapidly and
became a truly modern city.
A water and wastewater system, costing over
15 million Lithuanian litas, was
put in place; the city expanded from 18 square kilometers to 40;
more than 2,500 buildings were built, including three modern
bridges over the Neris
and Nemunas
rivers. All the city streets were paved,
horse-drawn transportation was replaced with modern
bus lines, new suburbs were planned and built, and new
parks and squares were established. The foundations for a
social security system were laid, three new
schools were built, and new public libraries, including the
Vincas Kudirka library, were
established. Vileišis maintained many contacts in other European
cities, and as a result Kaunas was an active participant in
European urban life.
Viliešis
was also a professor at Vytautas Magnus University
. On February 1, 1933, he was appointed to
the
State Council
of Lithuania, and worked on the Civil Codecs of
Lithuania.
He died
in 1942 at Red Cross Hospital
in Kaunas, and is buried in Vilnius' Rasos
cemetery in
the Vileišiai family chapel.
Awards
References
on Vileišis
family
Wikis
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