The First Gift
>> at the Andrejs Upīts Memorial Museum
In her work, The First Gift, Ieva Epnere continues to examine reformist teaching ideas dating back to the turn of the 20th century. In Riga, these were introduced by Marta Margarita Rinka (1880-1953).
From 1900 to 1942, Marta Rinka ran The
Green School, the kindergarten founded
by philanthropist Augusts Dombrovskis,
which was Latvia’s first pre-school
educational institution.
It was temporarily closed after the events
of the 1905 Russian Revolution, during
which time progressive social workers
were oppressed.
With the financial support of Augusts Dombrovskis, the Head of The Green School, Marta Rinka travelled to Berlin (1906-1908), where she took courses at Pestalozi-Fröbel-Haus. In inter-war Latvia, Marta Rinka became a notable specialist in matters involving the training of employees at pre-school children’s institutions. In 1944, she went into exile in Germany, from where she emigrated to the USA (in 1949?). Marta Rinka died in New Jersey, USA. Marta Rinka was the romantic inspiration for writer and critic Andrejs Upītis’ poem Spring Songs (1902).
In the late 1970s, the Andrejs Upīts’ Museum received a gift of five books in German from teacher Olga Ziemele that had been discovered a midst a pile of scrap paper in a school courtyard. Their title pages had been stamped with a stamp bearing the name of the owner of the books, “Marta Rink”. During a stay in Berlin, Ieva Epnere had the opportunity to visit Pestalozi-Fröbel-Haus, which was founded in 1882 by Henriette Schrader-Breymann, as well as its archive. There she discovered new facts about Marta Rinka’s experiences in Berlin and the knowledge she acquired there.
Ieva Epnere’s work The First Gift connects all these new discoveries. In this work the artist inquires into why these books can be found at the Andrejs Upīts’ Museum and the nature of the connection between Marta Rinka and Andrejs Upīts. I. E.