Erikas Pempė (20 January 1911 – 15 February 1990), also known as Erich Pempė and later Eric Pempe, was a Lithuanian educator, physical-education specialist, and reserve army officer from the Klaipėda Region (German: Memelland) of Lithuania. He taught physical education at the in Klaipėda and later worked at schools and higher-education institutions elsewhere in Lithuania. In 1944 he served as an interpreter and officer for special duties with the Vilnius Command of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force (Lietuvos vietinė rinktinė). As the Red Army advanced into Lithuania later that year, he fled westward with his family. He lived as a displaced person in Germany before immigrating to the United States in 1949.
Pempė's life and writings provide a personal perspective on the political and cultural tensions of the interwar Klaipėda Region, a former German territory incorporated into Lithuania in 1923 and administered autonomously until Nazi Germany annexed it in 1939.
Raised in a German-speaking environment but increasingly identified with Lithuania, Pempė experienced the region's competing national and political loyalties directly. These tensions were reflected throughout his own life, including in his language, education, citizenship, military service, and professional choices. His subsequent experiences of German annexation, Soviet occupation, and wartime displacement further reflected the wider upheavals that transformed Lithuania and other European border regions during World War II.
At some point after leaving Lithuania, Pempė wrote an autobiographical account of his experiences in the Klaipėda Region and Lithuania in the 1930s, focusing particularly on questions of nationality, citizenship, and identity. Written under the name John Winglap, it was published in English as A Reluctant Citizen: Making a Life in German-Occupied Memel and Lithuania 1932–1940 (2017) and in Lithuanian as Tapatybės kryžkelėje: Tarp vokiškumo ir lietuvybės 1932–1940 m. (2021).
Early life and education Pempė was born on 20 January 1911 in Pagėgiai (German: Pogegen), then part of East Prussia in the German Empire, not far from Memel (present-day Klaipėda, Lithuania). His parents were Dovydas (David) Pempė, a blacksmith, and Berta Kasperaitytė. He was the youngest of six children. The family was Lutheran.Lithuanian Central State Archives (LCVA), f. R-643, ap. 1, b. 3042.
Pempė was raised in a German-speaking environment and received his elementary education entirely in German from 1917 to 1925.Lithuanian Central State Archives (LCVA), f. R-762, ap. 2, b. 700, 1. 247 a. p. According to his memoir, he completed German elementary school at the age of 14 without knowing Lithuanian. Intending to continue his education at the Lithuanian Teachers' Seminary in Klaipėda, he attended Lithuanian-language courses to prepare for its entrance examinations. He was accepted at the age of 15, making him one of the youngest applicants admitted to the seminary.Winglap 2017, p. 16.
Pempė graduated from the Klaipėda Teachers' Seminary in the spring of 1932. Even before completing his final examinations and formally receiving his diploma, he received his first teaching assignment in March at a Lithuanian-language school in Klaipėda. In his memoir, Pempė attributed the appointment to his examination performance: he had received marks equivalent to "very good" in all of his written examinations, including Lithuanian. He subsequently taught at the Kristijonas Donelaitis Primary School in Klaipėda.Winglap 2017, pp. 31, 42.
In September 1932, Pempė was called up for compulsory military service in the Lithuanian Army.Winglap 2017, pp. 33, 37. He chose to fulfill his military obligation through officer training at the Military School in Kaunas. On 15 September 1933, he was commissioned a reserve junior lieutenant in communications.
Following his military service, Pempė returned to teaching in the Klaipėda Region, working at the and Plikiai primary schools.
On 1 July 1934, he began studying at the in Kaunas, a university-level institution for the training of physical-education specialists.Winglap 2017, pp. 64-65. He studied there until 15 September 1936. His diploma work was entitled Mokyklinė mankšta Austrijoje ("School Gymnastics in Austria").
From 1936 to 1938, Pempė continued his professional specialization abroad on a Lithuanian state scholarship.Winglap 2017, pp. 71-72. His military-officer biography records that he spent a semester each at higher schools of physical education in Vienna, Stockholm, and Amsterdam. During his studies in Sweden in 1936, Pempė encountered orienteering and later introduced the activity into his physical-education teaching in Lithuania, organizing monthly orienteering competitions for his pupils.Winglap 2017, p. 50. His activities coincided with the beginnings of orienteering in Lithuania.
Teaching career in Klaipėda On 1 April 1938, Pempė began working as a physical-education teacher at the Vytautas Magnus Gymnasium in Klaipėda.Lithuanian Central State Archives (LCVA), f. R-762, ap. 2, b. 700, 1. 247.
Historian and pedagogue described Pempė as a Lithuanian Army reserve officer and a physical-education teacher who was well liked by his pupils. Former pupil Vilius Ašmys similarly remembered him as a teacher who approached physical education comprehensively and was popular among students.Vilius Ašmys, letter to Arūnė Arbušauskaitė, cited by Arūnė Arbušauskaitė in Lietuvos optantai: klaipėdiškiai, 1939 [Lithuanian Optants: People of the Klaipėda Region 1939].
Pempė's approach to physical education differed from what he regarded as the prevailing emphasis on competitive results, elite athletic performance, and military-style exercises. He placed less importance on competition, believing instead that physical education should contribute to the development of the whole student, including fostering character traits such as independence, confidence, determination, and the ability to make decisions. His studies abroad, particularly his exposure to Swedish methods, reinforced this approach.Winglap 2017, pp. 49-50, 98.
Pempė also organized student folk-dance groups, teaching Lithuanian, German, and Swedish dances. In his memoir, he recalled learning the Swedish dances while studying in Stockholm. He also directed a Lithuanian male choir and prepared music for school and community performances.Winglap 2017, pp. 100-101, 107-109.
During his studies in Kaunas, Pempė participated in the sports activities of the Lithuanian National Youth Union Young Lithuania (Jaunoji Lietuva), including its volleyball team. In his memoir, however, he expressed discomfort with the politicization of sport and with placing victory above fair competition.Winglap 2017, pp. 71, 93.
German annexation of Klaipėda and displacement
In March 1939, Nazi Germany demanded that Lithuania surrender the Klaipėda Region. On 20 March, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop presented Lithuanian foreign minister Juozas Urbšys with an ultimatum demanding the region's transfer to Germany. Lithuania acquiesced to the demand, and the transfer agreement was signed in Berlin on 22 March. Adolf Hitler arrived in Klaipėda the following day, an event Pempė personally witnessed.Winglap 2017, pp. 3-6.
According to his memoir, Pempė was offered the possibility of retaining his teaching position under German rule if he accepted German citizenship. Instead, he left the annexed territory for Lithuania.Winglap 2017, pp. 22-23.
Pempė also recalled being troubled by the changed attitudes of some Lithuanian teachers and community figures following the annexation. According to his memoir, some colleagues who had previously encouraged his Lithuanian identification and use of the Lithuanian language decided to stay in the region after the German annexation and would no longer speak Lithuanian with him. Pempė regarded this reversal as particularly striking given his own German-language upbringing and the effort he had made to learn Lithuanian. The experience intensified his uncertainty about the relationship between nationality, culture, citizenship, and political loyalty.Winglap 2017, pp. 19, 22.
The annexation also displaced the Vytautas Magnus Gymnasium where Pempė was still working. The school initially moved from Klaipėda to Kretinga, then to Šventoji, and eventually settled in Palanga under the name Šventoji Vytautas Magnus Gymnasium.Juška 2003, p. 615.
Pempė continued teaching at the school when it finally relocated to Palanga.Winglap 2017, p. 29. The contemporaneous student publication identified him as the teacher supervising student sports and as a teacher of gymnastics and military preparedness. The May 1940 issue reported that about 80 of the 540 students who had attended the gymnasium in Klaipėda were studying at the relocated school in Palanga, which had a total enrollment of approximately 250.
Following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Pempė encountered Polish military personnel who had fled Poland and were subsequently interned in Palanga. In his memoir, he recalled seeing soldiers and officers moving around the resort in groups and frequenting local coffee houses during the autumn of 1939 and winter of 1940.Winglap 2017, pp. 43-44.
Pasvalys and the first Soviet occupation
On 1 April 1940, Pempė was appointed a junior teacher at the in Pasvalys. Birutės tėviškė reported his transfer from the school in Palanga to Pasvalys. Pempė had joined the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union in 1939, and, effective 15 April 1940, he was appointed commander of the gymnasium's Riflemen's unit.
Pempė was living and working in Pasvalys when Soviet forces entered Lithuania in June 1940. In his memoir, he described watching Red Army tanks pass through the town and seeing a group of young people greeting the Soviet soldiers. He was disturbed both by the welcome given to the troops and by the absence of Lithuanian military resistance.Winglap 2017, pp. 51-53.
Pempė remained employed at the Pasvalys gymnasium during the first months of Soviet occupation. Effective 1 September 1940, he left the school at his own request and was appointed a junior teacher at the Vilnius IV Mixed Secondary School and the Vilnius VIII Polish Secondary School.Lithuanian Central State Archives (LCVA), f. R-762, ap. 2, b. 700, 1. 247.
Life in German-occupied Vilnius Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the occupation of Lithuania in June 1941, Pempė continued his teaching career in Vilnius. During the German occupation, he taught at the Vilnius Pedagogical Institute and Vilnius University, with his teaching including physical education and German. He also taught German at the Kunigaikštienė Birutė Gymnasium in Vilnius.
In 1941, Pempė met Sofija Fledžinskaitė in Vilnius. Through her mother, Aleksandra Zubovaitė-Fledžinskienė, Sofija was descended from the Zubov noble family; her father was Jonas Fledžinskas. She was studying physical education at Vilnius University at the time. They married on 3 April 1943, and their first child, Saulius, was born in Vilnius on 27 December 1943.
On 17 March 1943, the German occupation authorities closed Vilnius University and other Lithuanian institutions of higher education in retaliation for Lithuanian resistance to mobilization into an SS legion. Pempė's employment at those institutions thus ended. A month later, on 16 April, he took up employment with the Vilnius municipal fire and air-raid protection administration.Lithuanian Central State Archives (LCVA), f. R-643, ap. 1, b. 3042.
The following year, on 12 April 1944, Pempė was appointed to the Vilnius Command of the Lithuanian Territorial Defense Force as a translator and officer for special duties. His appointment ended on 23 May 1944, when the command was dissolved.