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100 litas 2009 Lithuania – the millennium of the mention of the name of Lithuania

100 litas proof coin with box.
Gold Au 999.9
Quality proof
Diameter 22.30 mm
Weight 7.78 g
Mintage 10 000 pcs
Issued in 2009

Description

The reverse of the coin has an extract from the Act of the Restoration of the Independent State of Lithuania in the form of an impressionable metaphor. It is encircled by the inscription LIETUVOS VALSTYBĖS ATKŪRIMAS (Restoration of the State of Lithuania). At the top of the coin, there is a monogram of the 11th of March Act, created by the artist Bronius Leonavičius. The Columns of Gediminas are represented at the bottom of the coin.

The obverse of the coin sarries an image of the Coat of Arms of the Republic of Lithuania (Vytis) in the centre—for the first time improvised in a calligraphic way. The inscriptions LIETUVA (Lithuania), 100 LITŲ (100 litas) and 2009 are arranged in a semicircle.

Before you is a coin with the impressed date of the re-establishment of independence of Lithuania – the 11th March 1990. It is a third coin dedicated to the millennium of Lithuania. The first one was dedicated to the year 1009 – the first mention of the name of Lithuania; the second one – to the old and the longest period of statehood – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). Thus we have a triptych with a stylish combination of the date numbers: 1009, GDL, 1990. Can’t we, however, take it as a numerological trick if we are aware that Lithuanian history of the modern times has had a whole series of peaks in the fights for freedom? Does the year 1990, made that outstanding, not obscure them? As a matter of fact, the 11th March has already become a anything like Finland during the Winter War. So the Republic of Lithuania ended its days sadly, and in the Second World War epoch during the Soviet genocide and Nazi Holocaust Lithuania lost nearly one third of its population. As a matter of fact, Lithuania’s honour was defended in the longest “war after war” – an armed partisan war with the USSR in 1945–1953. Today it is considered Lithuania’s greatest contribution to Europe’s history of the 20th century. We showed miracles of resistance, but, again, we were all alone. While some countries did not recognize Lithuania’s annexation by the USSR, this was not an obstacle to depicting Lithuania on maps in the same red colour. This was not recognised either by the Lithuanian émigré community or the dissidents in Lithuania itself. Perhaps only the Kaunas events of 1972 were a clearer expression of striving for freedom, but that required the sacrifice of Romas Kalanta. powerful yet no less significant was meant – namely Lithuania was the first to defy yet another echelon of colonialism and empires, and the first to break away from the citadel of communism. The axis of this process was March 11th. Thus this day became the beginning of a chain reaction which eventually destroyed the Soviet Union and, in the opinion of Edvardas Gudavičius, was not a routine brick in the assembly of velvet revolutions but its central pillar. This has been recognised not only by historians. Commemorating the 10th anniversary of Lithuania’s independence in 2000, a US congressional resolution read that “the 11th March 1990 declaration on the full sovereignty and re-establishment of independence of the Republic of Lithuania destroyed the former Soviet Union”. The August 1991 revolution in Russia, which changed the balance of global powers, was also guided symbol. In Charlottenburg Park Berlin there is an obelisk dedicated to the 11th March, designed by the Bosnian descendent Braco Dimitrijevic. This would be just commonplace were it not for the fact that the obelisk was erected in 1979 and dedicated to a day “that will probably be significant for world history”. What is it – a magic coincidence or a trick? And now let us have a serious look at the last centuries of Lithuania’s millennium.