DOVAS ZAUNIUS,
(1845-1921), active participant in the Lithuanian national movement. A
self-educated man and a prosperous farmer, he was one of the first to join
the movement in his native Lithuania Minor (East Prussia), then under German
rule. His farm at Rokaiciai, in the county of Pakalne, became the center for
national cultural
and political activities. Activists, who had fled Lithuania Major to escape
Russian persecution, were given shelter there and assistance in reaching
Western Europe or America. Georg Sauerwein spent a year at Zaunius' farm,
during which time he wrote
the anthem of Lithuania Minor. From 1885 on, Zaunius was a member of the Birute
Society and several times was elected as its chairman. One of the
founders of the Lithuanian Political Society, he made an unsuccessful bid for
the German Reichstag (parliament), and later campaigned for Jonas Smalakys,
who was elected from the Klaipeda district. In 1892 and 1900 Zaunius
submitted petitions with numerous signatures to the Prussian minister of
education requesting that the Lithuanian language be brought back into the
elementary school curriculum; the effort, however, was fruitless. In 1900 he
took part in organizing the Lithuanian ethnographic display at the Paris
World's Fair. He and his wife raised a family of nine children, one of whom
later became foreign minister of the independent Republic of Lithuania.
Literature:
ENCYCLOPEDIA LITUANICA I-VI, 1970-1978, Boston
