New acquisitions
At the beginning of August this year, during the repair work on the sewerage in Peldu and Kr. Valdemāra Street intersection, where the 22 Peldu Street building was located before the tram line was built in 1975, shards of a cake plate with the name of the company – V. Dierberga's Café and Patisserie – were found. The house where the shards were found belonged in the first quarter of the 20th century to R. Kita, a carpenter who made and sold coffins. It turns out that coffin makers also liked cakes. The plate was on legs and 34 cm in diameter.
Further research has shown that the café and confectionery of Viktors Dīrbergs, a Latvian national born in Harkiv (1881–1942), was initially located at 43 Graudu Street (in the Lipert House), but in autumn 1934, Viktors and Zuzanna Olga, born Buks, Liepāja (1890–1970), bought the former Bonica café and continued their business at 42 and 42a Graudu Street. Chess and draughts matches were allegedly held in the confectionery during the Second World War. On 14 June 1941, Viktor and Olga from 5-1 Saules Street were deported to Siberia, where he died in April 1942. Olga was released in November 1955.
The cake plate fragments were donated to the Liepāja Museum by Ilze Bernāte, Inspector of Cultural Monuments Protection, Architecture Department, Liepāja City Municipality "Liepāja City Construction Board."
Liepāja Museum has received a gift from the former commander of the Latvian Navy coast guard ship "Spulga," now a history and social sciences teacher at Liepāja 7th Secondary School, Ivars Ozoliņš – a lifebuoy of the vessel "Spulga," decorated with signatures of the crew members.
The lifebuoy is connected with the disturbing events of the ship's history. On the evening of 2 November 2000, the coastguard ship "Spulga" was on its way to the Swedish port of Karlskrona when it grounded on a rock off the Swedish coast due to a navigational error. Fortunately, all 17 crew members were evacuated, but the ship refloated, capsized, and sank in Sweden.
Ivars Ozoliņš was the ship's commander from 1992 to 1995, and the lifebuoy was presented to him as a farewell gift by his colleagues.
The historian of the Liepaja Museum, Aļona Križeviča, says that the donation will be a treasured addition to the museum's maritime history collection, "Liepaja Museum's collection has been purposefully built up over time on the development of the Latvian Navy so that the donation will be a precious addition to the collection on more recent times."
The 1979-built Spulga was one of the nine ships of the Coast Guard flotilla. It was initially built for the Fish Inspectorate but was handed over to the Coast Guard in 1992. Its value, including equipment and installations, was around 40 thousand lats. After the accident, it was stripped of 28,000 lats worth of armament and equipment.
The Liepāja Museum's collection of archaeological artifacts includes an unusual hollow stone found on the outskirts of Liepāja, in the dunes of the Karosta precinct, near the sea. Preliminary research suggests that it may be a Scandinavian historical object associated with the Scandinavian settlers who, along with the Curonians, established a settlement on the Grobiņa Pine between the 7th and 9th centuries.
The stone has four artificial hollows, one on the top and three smaller ones on the bottom. The hollows have been very carefully shaped and polished, and the worn surfaces testify to their antiquity. There are various assumptions about what the stone might have been used for – possibly for crushing grain due to its flat sides. The lower hollows may have been used for sharpening tools.
Although the stone is relatively small – 41 cm long, 37 cm wide, and 17 cm high – it weighs a substantial 41.9 kg. There is an old, natural fracture in the side of the stone.
The hollow stone has been examined and studied by Andris Grīnbergs, historian and nature researcher at the Latvian Petroglyph Centre, and Dr. geol. Associate Professor Ģirts Stinkulis acknowledged that the find is very peculiar and interesting.
The unusual stone was found on 7 May in the dune area around the Karosta by Arturs Bilerts from Liepāja, but the dune environment was not its original location, as evidenced by the layering of iron compounds that could not have occurred in a dry dune environment. The stone may have been moved several times.
