Dobele Liberation Monument Memorialinis vieta

The Dobele Liberation Monument is located in Dobele, approximately 250 meters west of the Bērze Bridge, opposite the Dobele Castle ruins.

The Dobele Liberation Monument is dedicated to the soldiers who fell in World War I and the Latvian freedom struggle. Sculptor Kārlis Zemdega created the Dobele Liberation Monument as a two-figure composition, where the ancient Latvian soldier is a symbol of the strength of the people, and the folk girl - the image of the Motherland - expresses the ideal of spiritual clarity.

The idea to build a monument in Dobele was put forward in 1924, but work on the monument was started by K. Zemdega only ten years later, in 1934. The monument was carved from a 44-ton block of Finnish granite, and together with the base the monument reached a height of 4.5 m. The ceremonial opening of the monument took place on June 9, 1940, at the site of the current Soviet soldiers' cemetery monument, on Brīvības Street, where the Dobele Liberation Monument stood until 1950, when it was blown up by order of the Soviet authorities.
With the beginning of the era of national awakening and thanks to the persistent activities of the initiators of the restoration of the monument created by K. Zemdega - the Dobele branch of the Latvian Culture Foundation, on July 21, 1988, the Dobele District Committee Office of the Communist Party of Latvia and the Executive Committee of the Dobele District Council of People's Deputies made a decision to support the initiative of the Dobele work collective and residents to restore the monument destroyed during the Stalin cult. At the same time, the Monument Restoration Fund was established, into which donations from companies, organizations and private individuals were used to restore and install the K. Zemdega monument in the square opposite the ruins of Dobele Castle. This place was selected taking into account the results of a survey of residents. The monument was restored and installed in 1996 thanks to the donations of Dobele residents. The monument was made of granite stone brought from Zaporozhye, Ukraine, and was sculpted by stonemason Liberijs Peļņa after a design by sculptor Inta Berga.