Academic Centre
The collection of books donated by Pēteris Zālīte (1864-1939) contains about 1,670 volumes in German, as well as a small number of books in Latvian.
The donation consists of books published in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. The most represented branches are history of philosophy, systems and conceptions of philosophy, logic, ethics, morality, historical geography and fiction. The collection holds editions by outstanding philosophers and thinkers, such as Plato, Kant, Sophocles, Jung, Xenophon, Spinoza, Aristotle, Pliny, Homer, Ovid and Seneca. It also contains works by the poets Heine and Schiller, as well as works in German by P. Zālīte himself. The donation was presented to the University of Latvia (UL) in 1938.
Pēteris Zālīte was born in 1864 in Rauna parish, educated at the parish school and then the church school. In 1885 he entered the highest class of Cēsu district school and then in 1885 he entered the University of Jena where he studied philosophy, theology and natural sciences and received the degree of PhD in philosophy.
On his return to Riga, he worked from 1893 as an editor of the newspaper “Mājas Viesis” and later at “Dienas Lapa”. In 1919 Pēteris Zālīte began working at the University of Latvia and in 1921 he was elected as a professor of philosophy. He has written more than 20 books, mostly about philosophy, and was a deputy in Saeima from 1930 to 1934. The donation is held in the Repository of the Library.
List of the editions included in the collection is available Union catalog.
A list of expenses included in the donation is available here.
