ABSTRACT
The Republic of Latvia was inaugurated as an independent, democratic state in 1918. Ethnic minorities were granted equal rights and Jewish life flourished due to cultural autonomy. The founding fathers and most core members of Ugunskrusts came from the urban, intellectual elite educated at the University of Latvia in Riga. From the beginning of the University’s existence in 1919, nationalists claimed that too many students from ethnic and national minorities were enrolled at an institution that was supposed to generate a Latvian elite. Germans, Jews and other nationalities are foreign bodies in the flesh of the Latvian nation, and people judge them only on the basis of their past and present merits, their behaviour and their relationship with the Latvian people. Although being ideologically close to the volkisch worldview and to the German National Socialists, Ugunskrusts was openly anti-German and criticised the economic and political influence of the Baltic German elite.
