Arturs Cipulis

1922-2006
Teacher, conductor, significant public worker

Arturs (also Artūrs) Cipulis was born on 14 March 1922 in Riga. He studied at the Primary School No. 18 in Riga, began his studies at the Riga Teachers' Institute, and continued at the Jelgava Teachers' Institute.

At the end of the war, Cipulis was conscripted into the Legion, and in the autumn of 1945, after being sent to the Braunschweig refugee camp, he founded the Braunschweig Latvian primary school in Germany where he worked as a teacher and later as a school administrator. From 1950 he was a school administrator at the Latvian primary school in Erel, and later he was also an education worker at other educational institutions in Sengwarden, Hamburg and Pinneberg.

In 1952, Cipulis settled in Pinneberg, near Hamburg, and began active public life. He became involved in the work of the Latvian Society in Hamburg, served as its director for thirty years (from 1966), founded the Braunschweig Latvian Choir and took over the management of the Hamburg Latvian Choir for more than forty years.

From 1972 to 2003 (with a break in the second half of the 1990s) Cipulis headed the Latvian Community in Germany (LCG; until the second half of the 1990s the organisation was called the Latvian Central Committee in Germany) and at the same time was active as the German representative on the Board of the World Association of Free Latvians (WAFL) and on the Presidium of the Western European Latvian Association. As chairman of the LCG he was for many years head of the administration of the Latvian Gymnasium in Münster.

Cipulis took care of the organisation and transfer of the WAFL archival documents to the State Archives as well as participated in the creation of the exhibitions “Song Festivals in Exile”, “WAFL 45 Years of Activity” and “Exile Archives Return” in cooperation with the Latvian State Archives.