Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis
[2] When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Lithuanians started the anti-Soviet June Uprising, Landsbergis became the minister of infrastructure in the short-lived Provisional Government of Lithuania.
Landsbergis hailed from an old German Landsberg family that traced its roots to a ministerialis who lived in 1055 at the Werden Abbey.
[3] In 1894, due to suspicions about his father's involvement in the Lithuanian book smuggling activities, the family was forced to leave Lithuania.
[5] Due to his Lithuanian activities, his father was imprisoned for ten weeks in Liepāja in 1900[4] and sentenced to two years of exile in Smolensk in 1902.
As an artillery captain, he participated in the Lithuanian Wars of Independence and saw action at Daugava River, Radviliškis, and Sejny.
Together with poet Faustas Kirša [lt] and future Minister of Foreign Affairs Juozas Urbšys, Landsbergis transported the gold in ordinary luggage.
[10] He felt the need for further education and attempted to study in Kaunas, Prague, Berlin, until he enrolled into the Higher School of Architecture in Rome (Regia Scuola Superiore di Architettura, now a department of the Sapienza University) in January 1923.
He discovered that the initial winning architect was also a member of the judge panel; it caused a controversy and Landsbergis' work was eventually selected as the winner.
He worked as a junior engineer at the Ministry of Transport (1926–1927), junior assistant of Mykolas Songaila [lt][10] at the University of Lithuania (1927–1929), consultant at the Ministry of Agriculture (1929–1931), architect of the Lithuanian Red Cross Society (1933–1938) and of the Amerikos lietuvių akcinė bendrovė [lt] (Lithuanian American Joint Stock Company; 1938–1939).
[7] It was a profitable profession enabling Landsbergis to drive in a Chrysler automobile and construct a two-floor personal residence which also housed his wife's medical practice.
He helped Balys Dvarionas organizing the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in 1940 and prepared a project for a 1,200-seat opera and ballet theater (it was not constructed).
When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Lithuanians started the anti-Soviet June Uprising, Landsbergis became the minister of infrastructure in the short-lived Provisional Government of Lithuania.
[13] His wife Ona Jablonskytė-Landsbergienė [lt] who remained in Kaunas and, without his knowledge, helped hide 16-year old Jewish girl Bella Gurvich (later Rozenberg) and was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1995.
[14] Additionally, Ona assisted her sister's family in sheltering a Jewish child, Avivit Kissin, from the Holocaust.
[17] Landsbergis followed his son's journey, smuggled him food, and petitioned Nazi officials (including Alfred Rosenberg, his acquaintance from the Riga Polytechnical Institute and the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories).
Some of the projects he worked on include the embassy of Australia in New Delhi, hospital in Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), government administrative building in Melbourne, tax office in Brisbane, factory for Burghart Hurle and Associates.
The same year, Science and Encyclopedia Press published a monograph by Jolita Kančienė and Jonas Minkevičius about Landsbergis.
Of these buildings, eight were designed by Landsbergis:[22] His other notable projects include: In addition to public buildings, Landsbergis prepared projects for several private homes, some of them for the famous Lithuanians: writers Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė (1932), Antanas Žukauskas-Vienuolis (1937), Pranas Mašiotas (1931), economist Petras Šalčius [lt] (1930), and others.
