Vladas Jurgutis

Vladas Jurgutis (1885–1966) was born in Palanga. He graduated from Palanga Progymnasium in 1902 and from the Samogitian Seminary in Kaunas in 1906; he was ordained to the priesthood in 1908. In 1910, he studied at the Catholic Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg, and from 1910 to 1914, at the Faculty of National Economics of the University of Munich. From 1914 to 1915, he worked at the Samogitian Seminary in Kaunas, and from 1916 to 1917, at the Saratov Seminary. In 1918–1920, he was Professor and Prefect at the Samogitian Seminary. In 1920, he was elected to the Constituent Seimas, and was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania in 1922. He served as Governor of the Bank of Lithuania between 1922 and 1929. Vladas Jurgutis is known as the “father of the litas” for his contribution to the creation and establishment of the national currency. From 1929 to 1940, he was a member of the State Council. In 1925–1940, he taught at Vytautas Magnus University (known as the University of Lithuania until 1930); from 1929 to 1940, he served as Head of the Finance Department at the Faculty of Law, and from 1925, as Professor. In January 1940, by Act No. 46 of the President of the Republic of Lithuania, he was transferred to Vilnius University. In August of the same year, he was appointed Ordinary Professor at the Finance Department of the Faculty of Law, and from October also served as Ordinary Professor at the Faculty of Economics of Vilnius University. In December 1940, the Council of the Faculty of Economics awarded Vladas Jurgutis the degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences. From 1941 to 1943, he served as Head of Department and Dean of the Faculty of Economics. In the spring of 1943, together with other Lithuanian intellectuals, he was arrested for criticising the policies of the National Socialist authorities and for campaigning against the mobilisation of Lithuanians into the National Socialist army, for which he was imprisoned in the Stutthof concentration camp. After the camp was taken over by Soviet forces in the spring of 1945, he was returned to Lithuania, interrogated, and imprisoned for approximately two months in Vilnius, in the basement of an NKVD building. In 1945, he was appointed Professor (without a doctoral degree) at the Faculty of Economics of Vilnius State University and Head of the Department of Finance and Credit. In 1946, by Rector’s Order No. 1010, Vladas Jurgutis was dismissed from the University. The order stated: “[…] in his lectures he continued to propagate bourgeois theories contrary to the doctrines of Soviet science and the Soviet state”.