Vytautas Landsbergis

Landsbergis was married to Gražina Ručytė-Landsbergienė (1930–2020), who was a well-known Lithuanian pianist and associate Professor of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater.

His daughters Jūratė and Birutė are also musicians.

His son, Vytautas, is a well-known Lithuanian writer and film director.

Vytautas Landsbergis (born 18 October 1932) is a Lithuanian politician and former Member of the European Parliament.

He was the first Speaker of Reconstituent Seimas of Lithuania after its independence declaration from the Soviet Union.

He has written 20 books on a variety of topics, including a biography of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, as well as works on politics and music.

He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration, and a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Vytautas Landsbergis, member of an old German Landsberg family, was born in Kaunas, Lithuania.

His father was the architect Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis.

His mother, ophthalmologist Dr. Ona Jablonskytė-Landsbergienė, assisted her sister's family in sheltering a Jewish child, Avivit Kissin, from the Holocaust.

She brought Kissin to her sister's home and produced a forged birth certificate with a Lithuanian for Kissin.

Her sister and brother-in-law were named Righteous Among the Nations.

Jablonskytė-Landsbergienė was also named as Righteous Among the Nations for her efforts to help hide a 16-year old Jewish girl named Bella Gurvich (later Rozenberg).

In 1952 he placed third in the Lithuanian chess championship, after Ratmir Kholmov and Vladas Mikėnas.

In 1955, he graduated from the Lithuanian Conservatory of Music (now Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre).

In 1969, he wrote his thesis for his PhD degree.

In 1978, he became a professor at the Lithuanian Conservatory.

From 1978 to 1990, he was a professor at both the Lithuanian Conservatory and the Vilnius Pedagogical University.

His grandson Gabrielius Landsbergis (b. 1982) is the current leader of the conservative party, a member of Lithuanian Parliament and Foreign Minister of Lithuania.

Landsbergis entered politics, in 1988, as one of the founders of Sąjūdis, the Lithuanian pro-independence political movement.

In 1989 elections to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union, Landsbergis was elected as one of the People's Deputies from Lithuanian SSR.

After Sąjūdis' victory in the 1990 elections, he became the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania.

On 11 March 1990, he headed the Parliamentary session during which the restoration of Lithuanian independence from the Soviet Union was declared.

Lithuania became the first Soviet Republic to do so.

According to the Temporary Primary Law (de facto temporary Constitution, until the permanent Constitution comes to power) of Lithuania, Landsbergis was both: the highest officer of State and the Speaker of the Parliament.

He held this post from March 1990 until the next elections in November 1992.

The Soviet Union attempted to stifle this activity by economic blockade in 1990, but it failed, and other Soviet Republics soon followed suit and declared their independence from Moscow, as well.

He was also extremely dubious of the view that Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to liberalize the Soviet Union and that Lithuania should not prevent him from doing so.

Landsbergis also played a crucial role during the confrontation between the Lithuanian independence movement and Soviet armed forces in January 1991.

Iceland was the first state that officially recognized the restoration of Lithuanian independence; Landsbergis was somewhat critical of certain Western powers (such as the United States and United Kingdom) for not showing enough support in Lithuania's bid to restore its independence after more than 40 years of Soviet occupation, although he did accept the recommendation from his government that the newly independent Lithuania immediately seek to establish full diplomatic relations with the UK and US.

In 1993, Landsbergis led much of Sąjūdis into a new political party, the Homeland Union (Tėvynės Sąjunga).

In 1994, he wrote a thesis for his doctor habilitus degree.

It gained a landslide victory in the 1996 parliamentary elections.

Landsbergis served as Speaker of the Seimas from 1996 until 2000.

He ran, although unsuccessfully, for president in 1997 (coming up the third after receiving 15.9% of the votes).

During the runoff, he supported Valdas Adamkus, who had finished second in the first round.

Adamkus eventually became president.

In 2004, Landsbergis was elected by Lithuanian voters to the European Parliament in Brussels (the total number of MEPs from Lithuania in Brussels was 13), and has been returned at every election until 2014.

In 2005, Landsbergis became an international patron of the newly formed Henry Jackson Society.

Since 2015 Landsbergis is together with Roswitha Fessler-Ketteler, MEP Heidi Hautala, Aleksi Malmberg and Frank Schwalba-Hoth member of the advisory board of the Caucasian Chamber Orchestra association and its German "Förderverein".