Description
The author’s goal is to create a multi-volume encyclopedia that, by compiling archival research and photographic documentation of manors, presents the history, architecture, and art of Latvian manors in a concise and comprehensive manner.
The second volume of the encyclopedia covers 93 manors in alphabetical order. Each entry begins with the manor’s location and economic description, followed by a brief history of ownership, with particular emphasis on the origins and decline of the estate. This is followed by a summary of the construction history of the manor house or palace, as well as a description of the ensemble of utility buildings and the park. The 294-page volume uses German for identifying image content. Bilingual captions allow German-speaking readers to fully engage with the publication. At the end of the book, a list of abbreviations used in the image captions, sources, and references are included.
Author Vitolds Mašnovskis explains that the encyclopedia was created as a tribute to the centenary of Latvia, and it was during this important anniversary year that the first volume finally took on a tangible form.
For the publication of the encyclopedia, an archive of more than 300,000 photographs and documents has been created. Sources used for researching the history of manors and approximately 600 noble family genealogies include archival materials from Latvia, Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Poland, Russia, and Belarus, as well as publications by German architects and historians.
