DRAUGAS NEWS Lithuanian World Wide News in English
Birutė Vaičjurgis Šležas
Couples stepping smartly on the dance floor to the sounds of a foxtrot, the bandleader directing black and white musicians in jazzy renditions of the latest hits, the haughty diva strutting through a glittering crowd to the posh table reserved for celebrities. Is this London, New York, Berlin? Would you believe Kaunas, in 1931?
Quite incredible if one looks back a mere decade. In 1917 Kaunas, then known as Kovno, was a sleepy garrison outpost of some 90,000 in a remote corner of the vast Russian Empire. But its destiny was about to change. In 1918 Lithuania declared its independence with Vilnius as its capital, ushering in an era of astounding national achievement. But the young republic experienced a painful blow when Vilnius was seized by Polish troops in 1920. The official functions of the state were transferred to Kaunas, making it the new seat of government and the temporary capital of the Republic of Lithuania. From that day on, Kaunas would never be the same.
By 1930, with over 150,000 inhabitants and spread over a larger area, the old Kovno was unrecognizable. With extensive new construction outside of the Senamiestis (Old Town) limits, Kaunas had become a modern European city. Government, commercial and residential buildings in the Art Deco style sprouted on every street, comprising an unequaled ensemble of modern architecture that was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023. As Lithuania’s center of culture and learning, it boasted a university, the national military academy, music conservatory, museums, opera and theater. Some students of the period have referred to Kaunas as an “American” city in terms of its urbanization, energy and dynamism.
The artistic elite of Kaunas, educated in the capitals of Europe, represented the independent country’s high culture. The Kaunas Valstybės Teatras (State Theater) was established to serve as the home of the performing arts. Here the opera, ballet, symphony orchestra and drama theater presented performances that were on a par artistically with the rest of Europe. The dramatic productions drew artists from abroad. Working here in the thirties was Michael Chekhov (nephew of the famed playwright), whom the great acting teacher Stanislavski, creator of The Method, considered one of his best students. Andrius Oleka Žilinskas (Jilinsky), who had also studied with Stanislavski, founded the Kaunas Jaunimo Teatras (Youth Theater).
By day Kaunas had become a mid-size bustling modern metropolis, while at night it was shedding its traditional Lithuanian guise and becoming a cosmopolitan hotspot. As the world changed and Kaunas grew, prosperous Lithuanians looked for fun and entertainment. The stage was set for popular culture and a need for music. Radio, films and recordings of the era provided it. And the classically trained musicians of the symphony orchestra could play it, moonlighting as band members at various night clubs. Joining them was an influx of jazz and swing players from the European and, sometimes, U.S. music scene.
Many of the fashionable gathering places for society types, intellectuals and artists clustered around Laisvės alėja (Liberty Avenue), the main thoroughfare of the new Kaunas. It was a mile long and its median had a promenade lined with linden trees. (It is now a pedestrian mall, the longest one in Eastern Europe.) The locale and era are conjured up by such legendary names as Metropolis, Versalis (Versailles), Trys milžinai (Three Giants), which were restaurants, and Konrado kavinė (Konrad’s Café). There is a distinction between these two types of establishments. Restaurants differed not only in their menu of more substantial fare and stronger drinks; they were also required to have tablecloths and did not serve desserts. Cafés, on the other hand, could not use table coverings nor serve hot food – offering only coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, beer and confections.
The most famous of the nightclubs was Metropolis on Laisvės alėja. Built in the 19th century, it was a three-story hotel with a restaurant and café situated on the ground floor, where at night there was live entertainment. It, along with the other large restaurants, was one of the main venues for the city’s cultural and social events. Here the Kaunas elite attended galas, charity balls and concerts. Women came dressed in stylish evening gowns. Men wore the proper formal attire. There was a table reserved for President Antanas Smetona and his wife, who would sweep through the awestruck crowd with their entourage. At fund raisers and other events, between the music sets and the dancing there would be games, lotteries and contests as well as other entertainment. Metropolis promoted its position as the premier popular music venue. The Feb. 15, 1931, edition of the Kaunas daily Diena had the following notice: “The management of the Metropolis restaurant wishes to announce to its valued clientele and the general public that it has recently acquired a vibraphone – the only one in the Baltic States – which is now at the restaurant.”
Adding to the cosmopolitanism, on occasion Black artists from the United States performed in the clubs as tap dancers or members of the band. Even the renowned Josephine Baker appeared in Kaunas on tour with an orchestra from Sweden.
Konrado kavinė, also on Laisvės alėja, was where the creative crowd gathered. Painters, actors, literary figures and journalists met at their regular tables, some of which had their own special names. For example, the table where the prominent writers Balys Sruoga and Vincas Krėvė used to sit was called Parnassus. The artistic intelligentsia would start filtering in between 12 and 3 in the afternoon to share news, express opinions and discuss current events over a good, inexpensive cup of coffee. In the evening there was live music.
Many of us are familiar with the popular music Lithuanians listened to during the interwar years. Our parents and grandparents may have danced to it in their youth. We ourselves may have heard the artists’ recordings. We may immediately recognize quite a few of the era’s classic numbers and sing along. Take “Paskutinis sekmadienis” (The Last Sunday), for example, a nostalgic tango sung by Antanas Šabaniauskas (1903–1987). Were you as surprised to hear it in the film Burnt by the Sun (1994), set in 1930’s Soviet Russia, as I was? Turns out the song is “To ostatnia niedzela,” written in 1935 by Jerzy Petersburski, a Polish Jewish composer. It became a huge hit, and not just in Lithuania.
Indeed, the Jazz Age with its songs and dances swept through Europe, not bypassing Kaunas. The tango, foxtrot and English waltz caught on. Silky-voiced crooners and comedic songsters entertained the Kaunas nightclub set. And the bandleaders were the stars of this music scene as much as the singers.
Moishe (Mykolas) Hofmekleris (1898–1965) led the featured orchestra of the Metropolis “small stage,” literally a raised platform at one end of the hall, which lent its name to the genre of popular music that competed with the high culture of the “large stage.” Hofmekleris, a violin virtuoso, had moved to Kaunas with his parents and brothers in 1920 after Vilnius was occupied by the Poles. In a few years he formed “Hofmeklerband,” also known as the “Metropolis orchestra.” During the day and at lunch they played classical music, switching to jazz and swing at night. Hofmekleris arranged numbers, wrote his own pieces, and encouraged Lithuanian composers to create original music for the small stage. On weekends the Kaunas Radio did a one-hour broadcast live from Metropolis. The radio also played the recordings the orchestra had made in the studios of Berlin and Kaunas. For his achievements Hofmekleris was decorated with the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas in 1932.
Just as celebrated was the bandleader Danielius Pomerancas (1904–1981), who was also an accomplished violinist having studied in Berlin and Vienna. He played in Berlin’s cafés with prestigious orchestras and knew some of the top jazz musicians of the day. Returning to Kaunas in 1933, he formed a band of six to seven musicians who played at Konrado kavinė. Soon they were competing with the famous Hofmeklerband at the Metropolis.
Still another well-known orchestra of the time was that of Antanas Dvarionas (1899–1950), who came from a distinguished family of composers and musicians. He made a number of recordings in London and occasionally appeared at the Metropolis with Hofmekleris’s band, often singing “Paskutinis sekmadienis,” a repertoire favorite.
This brings us back to Šabaniauskas, who, where many are concerned, “owns“ exclusive rights to the aforementioned tango whose title expresses a lover’s sad farewell. Šabaniauskas was the heartthrob of that generation. Women swooned over him. He was the Frank Sinatra of thirties Kaunas. Raised by his mother in modest circumstances in the town of Jurbarkas, he benefited from the largesse of an aunt who lived in the United States for his education and travels. In Italy he entered a Salesian monastery, which he left; he went on to Verona, where he sang in the cathedral choir and studied solo voice. Back in Lithuania, he sang at the Metropolis and other night spots and also in the chorus of the State Opera Theater, occasionally performing minor tenor roles. He was heard on the radio, toured Lithuania, recorded over sixty songs with Columbia Gramophone in London and His Master’s Voice in Copenhagen. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania he kept a low profile and stopped performing, although he was hardly forgotten. He returned to the small stage in the early seventies and sang in clubs until his death in 1987, ending a career that spanned over six decades.
A much shorter but no less amazing career was enjoyed by Danielius Dolskis (1890–1931). He was an individual who seemed to have been everywhere and done everything. Born in Vilnius, he attended university in St. Petersburg, completing his law studies while also pursuing acting. He was adept at languages. He knew at least six of them, later adding Lithuanian to the list. He performed at St. Petersburg’s exclusive Villa Rode restaurant, where Rasputin was often seen drinking and carousing. It is said that Rasputin enjoyed Dolskis’s comic anecdotes and routines. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Dolskis found himself in Riga, then in Berlin, briefly acting in silent films. He played a prince’s manservant in the 1929 film Der Adjutant des Zaren (The Adjutant of the Czar).
Invited by Pomerancas, Dolskis moved to Kaunas. And here he became a sensation. The Kaunas daily Diena called him “the man who entertains Kaunas.” He was the beloved star of the small stage. Feeding popular demand, he performed international hits of the day, singing in Lithuanian, which he learned to speak well. Along with the songs there was his comedy. He wrote humorous parodies, monologues and anecdotes that kept audiences roaring with laughter. He was a master of mimicry and physical comedy. He skewered public personalities and commented on current events. His legacy has been preserved in sixteen recordings made in Berlin and London. Thanks to them we can hear such classics as “Onyte, einam su manim pašokti” (Annie, come dance with me) and “Palangos jūroj nuskendo mano meilė“ (My love drowned in the Palanga sea), which my generation parodied as we sang “my trousers drowned…” It is reported that after a nightclub performance he drank cold beer, which allegedly brought on pneumonia. He died several days later and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in the Žaliakalnis section of Kaunas. In 2007 a bronze statue of Dolskis was erected on Laisvės alėja, across from the former Metropolis.
It should be obvious that there would have been a very different Jazz Age in Kaunas without its Jewish bandleaders, musicians and singers. The German occupation of Lithuania and the Nazi regime cast a dark shadow over everything with its horror and brutality. Moishe Hofmekleris and Danielius Pomerancas were rounded up with other Jews and forced into the Kaunas ghetto. Under the most difficult circumstances, they formed a 40-member orchestra there that performed for the inhabitants. Fortunately, both of them survived the Holocaust.
Almost a hundred years later, the sounds and the aura of the period still resonate with us – even though on the corner of Laisvės alėja, where Metropolis once stood, is a pizza parlor and across the street, on the site of the former Konrado kavinė, is a fashionable boutique. And yet, if you listen closely, you might still hear the faint strains of “Paskutinis sekmadienis” and the words “today we part and forever leave each other…”
Notes:
YouTube is a treasure trove of Lithuanian popular music of the 1920-1930s. A collection of songs recorded by Antanas Šabaniauskas can be found at the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_0WCUSvhBQ&t=1192s A YouTube search will also find many individual songs recorded by Danielius Dolskis.
More information on the music personalities of the era is available in English on the Muzikos Informacijos Centras website: www.mic.lt/en
A search of individuals and names of music venues on the LRT (Lithuanian National Radio and Television) website www.lrt.lt will yield fascinating glimpses into the era.