Arvīds Brēdermanis

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Arvīds Brēdermanis (10 October 1900 – 22 February 1970) was a Latvian diplomat and a founder of the Latvian Scouting movement. He was born in Riga to a civil servant family. He studied at Vilis Olavs' Commercial School and the Riga City Realschule. During World War I, as much of Latvia was occupied by Germany, his family fled to different parts of the Russian Empire. In 1919 he finished his secondary schooling in Barnaul and was set to study at Tomsk University, but he was drafted into Aleksandr Kolchak's anti-Bolshevik army in Siberia. He later joined the Latvian volunteer Imanta Regiment and worked with the French military mission in Vladivostok. He returned to Latvia with the Imanta Regiment and served in the Latvian Army for about a year, until January 1920.

Latvian Scouting began during World War I when Riga schools were evacuated to Tartu (Dorpat). There, the 5th, 6th, and 7th Dorpat Troops formed, largely consisting of Latvian boys from the evacuated schools. Brēdermanis led the 6th Troop, founded on 26 September 1916. In 1917, after Easter holidays, K. Perešs called for the boys from Tartu to form a Scout group in Riga. This led to the 92nd Russian Troop, founded on 17 April 1917, with Perešs as Scout Leader and Brēdermanis as Patrol Leader; about 120 Scouts joined. On 3 August 1917, around 50 Latvian Scouts founded a separate 5th Riga Troop under Brēdermanis. The group’s activities were interrupted by the German occupation, and Brēdermanis was evacuated as a refugee to Samara. He later tried to revive the 5th Riga Troop after finishing his military service.

After the war he studied economics at the University of Latvia and began working in the Foreign Ministry, rising through various posts. He served at Latvia’s diplomatic missions in Berlin (1923–1924) and Kaunas (1930–1933). He left the Foreign Service to work as a journalist for the Latvian Telegraph Agency (1935–1939). From 1938 to 1939 he studied theology at the University of Latvia. From 1939 to 1940 he was the press secretary for the Japanese Embassy in Riga.

Following the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, Brēdermanis was arrested as a suspected Japanese spy. In August 1940 he was sentenced to eight years in the Gulag and sent to labor camps in Mordovia. In 1948 his sentence was increased to fifteen years. He was released and returned to the Latvian SSR in 1955. He later worked as an accountant for state enterprises in Riga. Brēdermanis died in Riga on 22 February 1970 and was buried in the Riga Forest Cemetery.