Eighty-third installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated (again) to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries” to see all of the entries that I have posted.

If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing. It is with this entry here that the calendar in Latvia changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar.

I accidentally missed posting November 7th’s entry on the day, you can read it by clicking here.

November 10, 1918

We were in Valmiera for the big market day. On the street boys are yelling that there is extra news! Kaiser Wilhelm has abdicated the throne! The Prince of Baden has also abdicated. The government has been taken over by social democrats. So the revolution is in Germany too. The German authorities received peace provisions on Friday morning from the Allies, and an invitation to respond within 72 hours – by 11 o’clock on Monday – to accept or reject them.