First Latvian National Awakening

The movement started after 1850 in the University of Tartu, which then was the highest place of education in Livonian Governorate and was attended by around 30 ethnic Latvian students.

Krišjānis Valdemārs, a student from Courland, posted in his dorm room a note identifying himself as a Latvian, which was unheard of at the time.

Another literary activist was teacher Atis Kronvalds, who discovered mention of a red-white-red flag in the 13th-century Livonian Rhymed Chronicle.

The First Awakening was a cultural movement mostly among the well-educated classes and soon ran out of momentum as Latvian society became more mature and interested in new political and scientific ideas.

The First Awakening's interest in folklore was carried on by the Baltic neopagan movement Dievturība, which was created in the 1920s by Ernests Brastiņš and Kārlis Marovskis-Bregžis.