1 Lats Rainis

This coin honors Jānis Pliekšāns — known by his pen name Rainis — Latvia's most celebrated poet and playwright, whose work became inseparable from the national independence movement of the early twentieth century. Exiled twice by Tsarist authorities for his involvement in revolutionary activity, he spent nearly two decades in Switzerland before returning to an independent Latvia in 1920. He later served as Minister of Education and director of the Latvian National Theatre.

The Bank of Latvia has a long record of issuing silver commemoratives tied to cultural figures, but Rainis occupies a category of his own in the national consciousness — his 1905 arrest followed directly from his editing of the newspaper Dienas Lapa.