Dubingiai ( pl, Dubinki) is a town in Molėtai district in Lithuania. It is situated near Lake Asveja, the longest lake in the country. The town has 208 inhabitants as of 2017.

History

The settlement was first mentioned in 1334, when

Teutonic knights The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem, commonly known as the Teutonic Order, is a Catholic religious institution founded as a military society in Acre, Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was formed to aid Christians o ...

razed ''terra Dubingam'' during one of their raids. Other raids took place in 1373 and 1375. During the reign of the Grand Duke of Lithuania

Vytautas the Great Vytautas (c. 135027 October 1430), also known as Vytautas the Great ( Lithuanian: ', be, Вітаўт, ''Vitaŭt'', pl, Witold Kiejstutowicz, ''Witold Aleksander'' or ''Witold Wielki'' Ruthenian: ''Vitovt'', Latin: ''Alexander Vitoldus'', O ...

the town became an important place in that part of Lithuania. In 1415 Vytautas ordered the building of a new masonry castle. Later it was governed by the Radziwiłłs who built

Dubingiai Castle Dubingiai Castle was a residential castle in Dubingiai, Molėtai district municipality, Molėtai district, Lithuania. The first masonry castle was constructed by Vytautas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, in 1412-1413 on an island, now a peninsula, in L ...

from rock and town became one of the centres of the

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

in Lithuania. Many famous members of Radziwiłł family were burned and are buried in the churchyard of Dubingiai castle. In the 17th century weave and paper manufactures were established in the town. In the 17th century - 18th century the town was slowly re-converted to

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. Within the

Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. The state was founded by Lit ...

, Dubingiai belonged to

Vilnius Voivodeship pl, Województwo wileńskie , conventional_long_name = Vilnius Voivodeship , common_name = Vilnius , subdivision = Voivodeship , nation = Grand Duchy of Lithuania (part of the federative Polish–Lithuani ...

. It was annexed by the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

after the

Third Partition of Poland The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polis ...

in 1795 and became a part of

Vilna Governorate The Vilna Governorate (1795–1915; also known as Lithuania-Vilnius Governorate from 1801 until 1840; russian: Виленская губерния, ''Vilenskaya guberniya'', lt, Vilniaus gubernija, pl, gubernia wileńska) or Government of V ...

. A massacre of over 20 Lithuanian inhabitants by a local

Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) est ...

unit occurred on 23 June 1944, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

.
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Gazeta Wyborcza ''Gazeta Wyborcza'' (; ''The Electoral Gazette'' in English) is a Polish daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It is the first Polish daily newspaper after the era of " real socialism" and one of Poland's newspapers of record, covering the ...

, 2001-02-14,
Litewska prokuratura przesłuchuje weteranów AK''
(Lithuanian prosecutor questioning AK veterans), last accessed on 7 June 2006 The crime was a retaliation by the Polish commander for an earlier massacre of Polish villagers in Glitiškės by collaborationist Lithuanian police.

Gallery

Image:Dubingiai6b.JPG, The remains of Evangelicals reformators church Image:Dubingiai1.JPG, The bridge of Dubingiai Image:Dubingiai8a.JPG, Asveja near Dubingiai

References

External links

*
Website of Dubingiai
{{Authority control Towns in Lithuania Towns in Utena County Vilnius Voivodeship Vilensky Uyezd