Antanas Kriščiukaitis

Antanas Kriščiukaitis, also known by the pen name Aišbė (24 July 1864 - 30 October 1933) was a Lithuanian writer and judge who served as the chairman of the Supreme Tribunal of Lithuania from 1918 until his death in 1933. A Lithuanian Society of Jurists member, Kriščiukaitis greatly influenced the development and modernisation of Lithuanian law.

Kriščiukaitis was born in Suvalkija to a family of well-off Lithuanian farmers. Already as a student at the Marijampolė Gymnasium, he started contributing articles to the Lithuanian press. He studied law at the Imperial Moscow University and joined a secret society of Lithuanian students, chaired by Petras Leonas. After his graduation in 1890, he worked as interrogator and judge in Moscow, Mitau (Jelgava), Tikhvin and Novgorod raising to the rank of State Councillor. He returned to Lithuania in 1918 and became chairman of the Lithuanian Tribunal. He became a professor of criminal law at the newly established University of Lithuania in 1922 and advisor to the State Council of Lithuania in 1929. He edited various legal texts, working to create new Lithuanian legal terms and standardize terminology. He received the Order of Vytautas the Great (1st class), the highest state award in Lithuania, in 1931. Kriščiukaitis died suddenly in 1933.

As a writer, Kriščiukaitis is known for his short stories that moved away from didacticism (which was prevalent in contemporary Lithuanian literature) to literary realism as well as satires and feuilletons. He published his works, articles, and translated texts in various Lithuanian periodicals, including Aušra and Varpas.

Biography Russian Empire Kriščiukaitis was born on 24 July 1864 to a family of well-off Lithuanian farmers in in Suvalkija, then part of Congress Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire. Later his father moved to Būgnai, which gave Kriščiukaitis his pen name Aišbė derived from the cryptonym A-iš-B (A-from-B or Antanas from Būgnai).