Kalvenes Street Houses No. 18 and 11

No. 18 and 11 Kalvenes Street in the 1920s

No. 18 and 11 Kalvenes Street in 2014

The first two buildings on the left are located on the same plot, therefore their address is the same - № 18 Kalvenes Street. Until 1913, this plot also included № 20 Kalvenes Street, which is not visible in the photo.

Until 1833, the land on which the above-mentioned plots of land were created belonged to Jaunlaža (Neu-Lasche) Manor. In 1838, the plot of land, on which a living house had already been built, was bought by the Aizpute Court Chief Officer and the titular adviser Alexander Carl von Offenberg (1793-1847) for 2,400 Rubles, but in 1841 Offenberg received only 1,270 Rubles from Isaak Sussmann Foss for this property.

In 1863, on a single plot of land at that time, there was a small residential house of Sussmann Foss, which he sold to Iser Taube in 1866.

In 1875, the property was worth only 650 Rubles when it was bought at that price by Itzig and Bertha Hirschhorn.

In 1901, a new house was built on the plot, which was bought in 1905 by Henriete Valkīra. In 1913, on the basis of her request, the plot of land in № 20 Kalvenes Street was separated.

In 1938, the right to property on №18 Kalvenes Street was secured for Valkīra's heiress Alise Ernestsone.

In the 1920s, №18 Kalvenes Street housed A. Zegner's bakery, as well as Anna Brash's photo studio.

Nowadays - a private residential house.

On the right side there is a residential house on № 11 Kalvenes Street.

Since in the publications of several authors there is a reference to the connection of this house with Fricis Brīvzemnieks - both that Brīvzemnieks had lived in this house and that this building was purchased by the parents of folklorist, poet, translator, folk school inspector Fricis Brīvzemnieks when their son was a couple of years old, it should be clarified that this house has nothing to do with Fricis Brīvzemnieks or his parents. In fact, on March 31, 1850, when his son Fricis was less than three and a half years old, father of Fricis Brīvzemnieks, saddler Jēkabs Treuland, bought a plot of land from the Court Bailiff Friedrich Christoph Lange for 1,225 Silver Rubles with a residential house also located on the present 46 Kalvenes Street. Brīvzemnieks' half-sister Wilhelmine Treuland in her memoirs about Brīvzemnieks published in 1911, pointing out that this house “is still located in Aizpute as the one before the last one on Boju Street”.

In 1811, the house of № 11 Kalvenes Street in the photo was replaced by residential house of the 77-year-old Andreas Bernhard Hohmann, the Town's Elder. In 1829, it was already owned by the district doctor’s assistant Johann Bamberg, but during the 1834 census, the house of the 56-year-old Carl Bamberg, the former serfperson of the Kazdanga Manor, who was released in 1817, was located here. And the Bambergs owned the property until 1869, when the doctor assistant's daughter sold it for 2,500 Silver Rubles to the gardener Albert Bennsdorf, who presumably reconstructed the house or even built a new one, because in 1882 he received from the baker Fritz (Friedrich) Herrwig 5,000 Rubles.

The next information is about 1910, when this house was inherited by the widow and children of Friedrich Herrwig. In 1912, Olga Herrwig, the daughter of the deceased Herrwig, was confirmed as the owner.

Krišis Jankovskis (1891-1975), the long-term leader of Aizpute's music life, spent most of his life in this house.

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