The flags in Mazirbe that day were not mere decoration. On 6 August 1939, the Livonian People’s House was ceremonially opened, a building Latvia’s Livonians had achieved through donations and support from Latvia, Finland, Estonia and Hungary. The Kolka source gives about 1,000 guests; that evening the new stage hosted Mārtiņš Zīverts’s “Tīreļpurvs” and Alekšis Kivi’s “Night and Day” in Livonian. In one day: a house, theatre, a language, and a whole coast-village world.

The Livonian People’s House was built at a time when Livonian public life in interwar Latvia was still visible, even as the community itself was shrinking. The Mazirbe house served a practical purpose: it had a hall, a stage, and rooms for a museum, a library and the Livonian Union.