Alexei Wassiljewitsch Naryschkin

Engraving depicting Alexei Wassiljewitsch Naryschkin

The family coat of arms

Alexei Wassiljewitsch Naryschkin ( Russian Алексей Васильевич Нарышкин ; * August 4, 1742 in Moscow ; † August 20, 1800 ibid) was a Russian military, later diplomat, statesman and author of the Enlightenment of related works, but also of poems and satires.

Live and act

He was the son of Vasily Wassiljewitsch Naryschkin, Sr. (1712–1779) and his second wife Anna Ivanovna Panina (1723–1780), he had an older half-brother Semjon Naryshkin (1731–1807) and another half-brother Vasily Wassiljewitsch Naryshkin, Jr . (1738-1786). The mother of his older brothers was the first wife of Praskovia Ivanovna Sonzewa-Sassekin (* 1704).

Naryshkin began his professional career as a soldier in the Izmailovsky Life Guard Regiment , the oldest modern Russian regiment - it was founded on September 22, 1730 - where he was promoted to the rank of ensign in 1761 . In 1764 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In his youth he was interested in poetry and between the years 1759-1762 he published some poems in the literature Трудолюбивая пчела .

In 1767 he became adjutant under General Feldzeugmeister Grigori Grigoryevich Orlov, and in this rank Naryshkin accompanied Catherine II on her journey along the Volga.

He translated two chapters of "Belisarius" (1769) by Jean-François Marmontel . He conducted extensive (literary) correspondence with the poet Alexei Rschewski (1737–1804). He later became a member of the Pskov Province . In 1767 Katharina appointed a commission to draft a project for a new code ( Legislative Commission “Nakaz” ( Russian Наказ , “instruction”, “mandate”)), to which elected representatives from all parts of the country were appointed. Naryschkin worked on this commission.

Then he traveled to Western and Southern Europe. So he stayed in Turin on a secret diplomatic mission and, after completing the mission, traveled to Paris and Germany. In Paris, Naryshkin met Denis Diderot . Diderot began his trip to Russia on June 11, 1773 in Paris after an invitation from Catherine II. After a stopover in The Hague , his journey continued on August 20, 1773, accompanied by Naryschkin to Saint Petersburg .

In the months of June and July of 1774 he accompanied Grand Duke Paul to Berlin to negotiate the future of the first wife Wilhelmine von Hessen-Darmstadt of the Grand Duke and later Tsar by diplomatic channels . In the same year 1774 Naryshkin was appointed chamberlain and sent on a diplomatic mission to Stockholm . The following year he was appointed governor of Pskov and on November 24, 1783 Naryshkin was appointed senator. Naryshkin was appointed a member of the Commission for the Construction of New Cities in 1786. In 1798 Paul I dismissed him from this service and Naryschkin temporarily left Russia again . He died in Moscow and was buried in the Donskoy Monastery .

literature

• Полезное Увеселение. 1760
• Activities of my leisure and memories of Russia. According to the French of the Russian Kaiserl. The secret councilor, senateurs, real chamberlain and knight Alexei Wassiljewitsch Narischkin. German translation by Franz Ulrich Albaum (1742–1806), Johann Friedrich Hartknoch , Verlag Johann Friedrich Hartknoch, Riga 1794

Web links

• Russian xviii centure.academic.ru biography in Russian
• Detailed biography
• Portrait of Alexei Wassiljewitsch Naryschkin
• Naryshkin's coat of arms
• Сергей Карп: Дидро, А.В. Нарышкин и цивилизация России. ГИИМ: Доклады по истории XVIII века - DHI Moscow: Lectures on the 18th Century No. 1 (2009)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Short biography in Russian
2. ↑ Карп С .: Дидро, А. В. Нарышкин и цивилизация России.
3. ↑ Genealogical data
4. ↑ Sergej Karp: Дидро, А.В. Нарышкин и цивилизация России. In: Denis Sdvižkov; Ingrid Schierle (ed.): Moscow lectures on the 18th and 19th centuries. DHI Moscow: Lectures on the 18th Century No. 1 (2009) Сергей Карп Дидро, А.В. Нарышкин и цивилизация России. Text in Russian (PDF; 635.59 kB)
5. ^ I. Krasnova: Famous Guests of Saint Petersburg: Denis Diderot. Story of a search. In: History of Petersburg. 3/2005. Pp. 68-71. (PDF; 221.12 kB) The author comes to the conclusion that Diderot lived with Alexei Wassiljewitsch Naryschkin and his brother Semyon, in a house of their father Vasily Wassiljewitsch Naryschkin.