Marija Šlapelienė

Marija Šlapelienė Piaseckaitė (5 June 1880 – 4 April 1977) was a Lithuanian activist, bookseller, journalist, and actress. Šlapelienė and her husband founded the first and one of the longest-running Lithuanian bookstores and were activists of the Lithuanian national revival movement.

Biography Early life and education Born Marija Piaseckaitė on 5 June 1880, Šlapelienė grew up in Vilnius, Vilna Governorate. She was the daughter of nobles Jonas Dominykas Piaseckis and Eleonora Vojcechovska. Her father was involved in the 1863 January Uprising. Šlapelienė grew up in a Polish family and only spoke Polish at home.

Šlapelienė went to school at the Vilnius Girls' Gymnasium and graduated in 1900. She grew up going to St. Raphael Church and participated in the church choir under vicar Juozapas Ambrozevičius, an organizer of the Twelve Apostles of Vilnius.

Lithuanian activities "Realizing that we are only bent Lithuanians –, I decided to be Lithuanian and began to diligently learn the Lithuanian language," Šlapelienė later wrote.

In 1904, Šlapelienė joined the Vileišiai brothers working at the editorial office and bookstore for Vilniaus žinios, the first Lithuanian-language daily newspaper. She worked there until 1906.

On 17 September 1905, Šlapelienė married doctor, political activist, and linguist . She had met Šlapelis via a friend, writer and activist Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė.

Bookstore In 1906, Šlapeliai and Elena Brazaitytė founded the first professional Lithuanian bookstore in Pociej Palace (now 11 Dominikonų St.). After its founding, the sign for the bookstore was one of four Lithuanian language signs in the whole of Vilnius.

alt=A black and white photograph of two women, one bald man, and one boy behind a table and in front of multiple bookshelves. During the Polish occupation of Vilnius and Ludwik Bociański's forcible Polish assimilation policies from 1935–1939, the bookstore reduced the amount of books to around 75. In 1938, Šlapeliene was charged by Polish authorities for distributing Lithuanian books and maps; she was detained for three days.

In 1945, the SSR ordered the closing of the bookstore. Some books were saved in other locations while others disappeared.

In 1956, the Lithuanian National Opera celebrated Šlapelienė and her performance in Birutė during their golden anniversary. alt=Photograph of a grey memorial plaque for Marija Šlapeliene and Jurgis Šlapelis with their dates of birth and death in a yellow wall. In 2003, Juozas Matonis and Vytautas Domasevičius made a documentary about the couple called Ištikimi lietuviškajam žodžiui: Marija ir Jurgis Šlapeliai [trans. Loyal to the Lithuanian word. Jurgis and Marija Šlapeliai].

In 2026, Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences organized a virtual exhibition to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Šlapeliai's bookstore and Šlapelienė's starring role in Birutė.