Sustainability by Education: How Latvian Heritage was Kept Alive in German Exile

Sustainability is one of the core challenges for education in modern times, particularly concerning cultural heritage. The study evaluates, from a German point of view, how Latvians outside of Latvia after World War II kept their cultural heritage alive by educational concepts, which can be characterized as early roots of modern sustainable education. The evaluation focus concerns a group of Latvians in Germany associated with the Latvian high school in Muenster (MLG). The study concerns the 25 years from 1957 (school relocation to Muenster) until 1982 (founding of the organization “Latvian Center of Muenster e.V.” (LCM), and combines interviews and literature research. It underlines that environmental, social and heritage education can be seen as core elements of Latvian education abroad. Therefore, the study will not present a concise history of the Latvian high school in Muenster (MLG), which has already been done (Sprogis, 2009), but will concisely evaluate the educational concepts of this particular period as a model, how Latvians maintained their heritage in a sustainable way.