Jonas Smalakys was a Prussian Lithuanian landowner, soldier, and the first Prussian Lithuanian to be elected to the Reichstag. Smalakys was born into a wealthy landowning family in Prussia, and in the 1850s used his inheritance to fund his travels across Europe, through the Balkans, and into Asia and Egypt. In 1859, he fought in the Second Italian War of Independence under Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1862, he returned to Prussia and owned a manor in Gross Aglawischken. He sold the manor in 1894 and moved to Tilsit where he worked in trade. Before selling his manor, Smalakys organized a gathering of Lithuanian and Prussian Lithuanian activists during the Saint Jonas' Festival in 1894. It included Vincas Kudirka and book smugglers. In 1895, he joined the board of the cultural Birutė Society and was its librarian. In 1898, he was one of the founders and board members of the Writing and Reading Society. In 1890, together with Martynas Jankus and Dovas Zaunius, Smalakys established the Lithuanian Conservative Election Society, which was the first of several such societies. Sometimes described as the first Lithuanian political party, its goal was to elect Prussian Lithuanians to the Reichstag and the Landtag of Prussia and to defend the use of the Lithuanian language, particularly when it came to the religious education in schools. Smalakys was a candidate to the Landtag in 1893 and 1898, but was not elected. In the Reichstag election of June 1898, Smalakys was elected in the Memel–Heydekrug district. In the first round, he received only 23% of the vote, but an alliance with the Liberals allowed him to gather 55% in the run-off and defeat his conservative opponent Generaloberst Graf Alfred von Waldersee. Two other Prussian Lithuanians, Dovas Zaunius and Mikelis Juška, as well as pro-Lithuanian linguist Georg Sauerwein unsuccessfully ran in the election. Jonas Basanavičius visited them from the Principality of Bulgaria and helped them with the campaign. In the Reichstag, Smalakys listed himself as a Lithuanian and defended the rights of Prussian Lithuanians. However, politically, he was conservative and supported the German Empire. In a March 1899 speech to the Reichstag, he offered "every coin and the last drop of blood" for the benefit of the German Imperial Army. After his death in May 1901, a by-election was held in July and another Prussian Lithuanian, a member of the German Conservative Party, was elected in his place.
