Juozas Tumas also known by the
pen name Vaižgantas (20 September 1869 – 29 April 1933) was a
Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest and an activist during the
Lithuanian National Revival. He was a prolific writer, editor of nine periodicals, university professor, and member of numerous societies and organizations. His most notable works of fiction include the novel
Pragiedruliai (Cloud Clearing) and the narrative
Dėdės ir dėdienės (Uncles and Aunts) about the ordinary village folk.
Born to a family of Lithuanian peasants, Tumas was educated at a gymnasium in
Daugavpils (present-day Latvia) and
Kaunas Priest Seminary. He began contributing to the Lithuanian press, then
banned by the Tsarist authorities, in 1889 or 1890. He was ordained as a priest in 1893 and posted to Mitau (present-day
Jelgava, Latvia). In 1895, he was reassigned to
Mosėdis in northwestern Lithuania. There he organized the publication of
Tėvynės sargas and the
book smuggling into Lithuania. His brother Jonas was caught with the banned publications and was sentenced to three years in prison and two years of exile. Due to his Lithuanian activities and short temper, Tumas quarreled with his superiors and was frequently moved to increasingly more remote parishes. However, in 1906,
bishops of Samogitia and
Vilnius agreed to allow Tumas to move to
Vilnius to work as an editor of the daily
Vilniaus žinios published by
Petras Vileišis. He edited the newspaper only for a couple of months but remained in Vilnius as editor of
Viltis, co-founded with
Antanas Smetona. This new cultural newspaper hoped to unite conservative Catholic clergy and more liberal
intelligentsia for the common good of the Lithuanian nation. After publishing an article critical of the
Diocese of Vilnius for suppressing the
Lithuanian language in favor of the
Polish language, Tumas was exiled to
Laižuva in 1911.
In 1911, together with
Konstantinas Olšauskas, he toured
Lithuanian American communities collecting donations for the construction of the headquarters of the
Saulė Society. During
World War I, Tumas moved to
Riga and edited
Rygos garsas. As a member of the
Lithuanian Society for the Relief of War Sufferers, he organized relief for Lithuanian refugees. In 1917, as one of the founders of the
Party of National Progress, he attended political conferences in
Petrograd,
Kiev, and
Stockholm advocating for full independence of Lithuania. He returned to Vilnius in 1918, but moved to
Kaunas after the former was
captured by Poland. He edited
Tauta, published by the Party of National Progress, and ran in the elections to the
Constituent Assembly of Lithuania, but largely withdrew from politics when he was not elected. He became
rector of the
Church of Vytautas the Great and organized its reconstruction. From 1922 to 1929, he taught a course on the
Lithuanian literature during the era of the
Lithuanian press ban (1864–1904) at the
University of Lithuania. Tumas published several works on writers' biographies and amassed a large collection of material (manuscripts, correspondence, photos, etc.) about the writers. On the basis of this material, he organized a literary archive at the university.
