Baronas ir baronienė Ernstas ir Jekaterina von der Osten-Sacken - kultūrinio gyvenimo Vilniuje dalyviai (XIX a. antroji pusė)

In this article the author takes a look at the couple of Russian noble intellectuals - Baron Ernst von der Osten-Sacken (1841/1846-1911), a descendant from the Germans o f Courland, and Baroness Ekaterina von der Osten-Sacken (1845/1846-1923), who lived in Vilnius in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Their life and cultural activities in Vilnius (1874-1892) can be considered as a characteristic phenomenon of the epoch: husband, who was appointed to a high-ranking post in the public service in Vilnius, and his wife accompanying him, who was a singer, amateur composer, poetess and writer, got actively involved in musical, theatrical and literary life o f the city by simultaneously maintaining their previous connections with prominent cultural figures, well-known writers, musicians, poets, individuals of the upper social class and in this way linking the Lithuanian cultural movement with equivalent phenomena in the hubs of the Russian Empire. The involvement of Ernst and Ekaterina in the activities o f cultural societies and concert life, their engagement in educational and charitable work, literary initiatives, reviews of musical and theatrical events, etc. contributed to the growth in the quality of the city's cultural life: lacking in quality as the outcome of long-term repressive measures of political censorship imposed by the tsarist rule in the 1860s was also sensed in the 1870s. While remaining at the margins of this article, there is an other historical noteworthy circumstance - Natalie Charlotte Chodakowska (born von der Osten-Sacken, 1819-1903) was grandmother to Sofija Chodakauskaitė-Smetonienė - the spouse of Lithuanian President Antanas Smetona, was also a descendant of the same von der Osten-Sacken family of German barons from Courland (it is likely from other family line).