On 25 April 1874, Old Style, Miķelis Valters was born in Liepāja into a working-class family – one of the earliest and sharpest formulators of the idea of Latvian state independence. He later became a member of the New Current, an exile, lawyer, publicist, diplomat and, in November 1918, the first Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Latvia. The sources also give the New Style conversion as 7 May, but Latvian historical sources clearly record his birth date as 25 April.

Valters’s life connects the socio-political radicalism of the New Current, the intellectual world of exile, and the founding moment of the Republic of Latvia. His 1903 argument for Latvia’s separation from the Russian Empire was bold at a time when autonomy still dominated over the demand for independence.