The deck of the Monte Rosa in the port of Riga turned out to be Alberts Kviesis’s last stop. On 9 August 1944, the former President of Latvia boarded the German ship with relatives, leaving a Latvia overtaken by war; soon after it left the harbour, while still on the Daugava, he suffered a heart attack. Kviesis was buried in Riga’s Forest Cemetery. His biography ends not in exile, but still in Riga — between the approaching front and the refugee movement westward.

Kviesis served as President of Latvia from 1930 to 1936, including after Kārlis Ulmanis’s coup of 15 May 1934. During the German occupation in the Second World War, he held office in the collaborationist Latvian Self-Government, so his death amid the refugee chaos of 1944 is also the final scene of a politically complicated biography.