50 Litų 200th Birth Anniversary of Adam Mickiewicz (Adomas Mickevičius)

Adam Mickiewicz was born in 1798 in the Lithuanian-Belarusian borderlands — then part of the Russian Empire — and spent much of his life in exile after Tsarist authorities suppressed the Philomath Society, a secret student organization he helped lead at Vilnius University. Lithuania's claim on Mickiewicz is complicated: he wrote in Polish and identified as a "Lithuanian of Polish culture," yet his birthplace and formative years give Vilnius a stake in him that Warsaw has never fully conceded. The 1998 commemorative falls precisely on that fault line.