ZENONAS IVINSKIS Zenonas Ivinskis (1908-1971), historian, born in Kausenai, near Plunge, on March 25, 1908. He studied at the university of Kaunas from 1925-1959 and at the Universities of Munich and Berlin from 1929-1932. After receiving his doctorate in philosophy, from the University of Berlin in 1932, he did further research in the Berlin-Dahlem and Danzig (Gdansk) archives. In 1933 he was appointed assistant professor in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy and chairman of the Department of history at the University of Kaunas; in 1940 he became associate professor. He also served as secretary of the faculty from 1937 until July 16, 1940, when it was closed down by the Soviet government. Thereupon he worked with the Culture Museum in Kaunas and taught economic history at the University of Vilnius as visiting professor. Ivinskis continued his lectures in Vilnius during the German occupation while re-establishing and reorganising the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Kaunas in 1941; he was dean of that faculty for two years.

When Soviet Russia occupied Lithuania for the second time in 1944, Ivinskis withdrew to western Europe, at first living in Germany (1944-1949), then in Italy and from time to time in Germany again, where he served intermittently as president of the Baltic research Institute, established in Bonn in 1953. While in Rome, for several years he strenuously pursued research into Vatican and other archives, copying a large number of important documents pertaining to the history of Lithuania. From 1964-1971 he taught Eastern European history at the University of Bonn. He was also a member of various academic societies, among them the Lithuanian Roman catholic Academy of Sciences , the Lithuanian Academy of Arts and Sciences (1941-1944), the institute of Lithuanian Studies, the Estonian Scholarly Society , the Hanseatic Society, and the Baltic Research Institute. He participated in and spoke at the First Convention of Baltic Historians in Riga (1937) and the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Zurich (1938), Rome (1955) and Uppsala (1960). Ivinskis died in Bonn on Dec. 24, 1971.

Ivinskis was one of the distinguished Lithuanian historians of the generation which same to maturity and began work in the period of lithuanian independence. He was exceptionally well acquainted with the historical literature of Lithuania and its neighbours, with the printed collections of sources and with unpublished documents, especially in the archives of Germany and Italy. He wrote numerous extensive studies in his field, such as Vytautas Didysis istorineje literaturoje ir jo perijodo bibliografija (1930), Uzsieniuose lietuviu ir apie Lietuva rasytosios disertacijos (1933), Senoves lietuviu religijos bibliografija (1937), Lietuvos istorija romantizmo metu ir dabar (1940), Ikisioliniai lietuviu kulturos istorijos tyrinejimai (1960), Lietuvos istorijos nauju saltiniu ir pokariniu tyrinejimu sviesoje (1964), etc.

In the general political history of Lithuania Ivinskis devoted himself most to the period from the 13th to the 16th century.

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