Dmitri Alexeyevich Golitsyn

Dmitri Alexejewitsch Golitsyn bust of Marie-Anne Collot

Dmitri Alexejewitsch Golitsyn , Russian Дмитрий Алексеевич Голицын , also Galitzin, (born May 15, 1734 in Saint Petersburg ; †  March 17, 1803 in Braunschweig ) was a Russian diplomat from the Galitzin dynasty , art agent of the Russian Tsarina Catherine II , mineralogist , volcanologist and writers.

Life

He was probably from 1760, the sources are inconclusive, until 1768 at the Russian Embassy in Paris , where he became a supporter of the French Enlightenment. Golitsyn became friends with Denis Diderot . Since 1764 he had a subscription to the Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique by Melchior Grimm . In 1766, Prince von Golitsyn bought 2,900 of Diderot's books for the collection of the Russian Tsarina. In 1768 he bought Count Heinrich von Brühl's collection of paintings for the Tsarina's collection of paintings (most of which are now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow), the collection of François Tronchin (1770) and Louis Antoine Crozat (1772) from Geneva . In 1771 he commissioned Jean-Antoine Houdon to make a bust of Diderot.

From 1769 he was ambassador in The Hague , in 1770 he joined the Russian Embassy 22 Kneuterdijk . Denis Diderot stayed with Prince von Golitsyn and his wife Amalie von Gallitzin on his trip to Russia from June 15 to August 20, 1773 . On the way back he came by again. He lived in The Hague for a total of eight months.

Kneuterdijk 22, today Raad van State .

Amalie Princess von Gallitzin, his wife

From 1768 he was married to Adelheid Amalie von Schmettau in Aachen , who served the wife of August Ferdinand von Prussia . The couple traveled to Dresden, Prague, Vienna and Saint Petersburg. Their daughter Marianne, called Mimi, was born in Berlin on December 7, 1769. Her son Demetrius Augustinus Gallitzin was born in The Hague in 1770. Around 1774 his wife decided to raise the children alone and moved out. At first she lived not far from Scheveningen and since 1779 in Münster , influenced by Franz von Fürstenberg .

In 1780, Katherina's armed neutrality was terminated. In 1781 Emperor Joseph II was included. Golitsyn made a few mistakes in The Hague; so he did not know when to speak or when to be silent. December 1782 he had to leave The Hague and went to Turin. In 1783 he returned.

Golitsyn had a better reputation as a scientist, he studied mechanics , owned a large electrostatic generator, and intensely collected minerals . In 1787 he was the first to describe a common mineral from the grenade group , the Spessartin (after a find near Aschaffenburg ). Golitsyn had been a member of the Ducal Society for the entire mineralogy of Jena since 1796 ; In 1799 he became its president. In 1793 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . From 1795 he was a member of the Leopoldina , from 1798 of the Royal Society . Most recently he lived in Braunschweig, where Baron von Grimm was staying. In December 1802 he gave away his mineral collection to Jena, it weighed a total of 1850 kg. Golitsyn demanded that they be exhibited according to the principles of René Just Haüy .

Fonts

• De l'homme, de ses facultes intellectuelles et de son education , The Hague 1772
• Histoire de la guerre entre la Russie et la Turquie, et particulierement de la campagne de 1769 , Amsterdam 1773
• Lettre sur quelques objets d'Electricite , The Hague 1778 (Russian Saint Petersburg 1778)
• Defense de Buffon , The Hague 1793
• De l'esprit des economistes ou les economistes justifies d'avoir pose par leurs principes les bases de la revolution francaise , Braunschweig 1796

literature

• Brief biography in Antonia Napp Russian portraits. Gender difference in painting between 1760 and 1820 , Böhlau 2010, p. 44
• Biography on the part of geologists of the Spessart

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Katharina Schirmer: The collection of paintings of Catherine II of Russia. The purchase of the European bon goût. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 2013, p. 56
2. ↑ Delpher Kranten- Middelburgsche courant 26-06-1773 . Retrieved January 14, 2015.
3. ^ Diderot op de Kneuterdijk (1) . Archived from the original on October 21, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 14, 2015. 
4. ↑ Delpher Kranten- Middelburgsche courant 26-06-1773 . Retrieved January 14, 2015.
5. ↑ see also Münsterscher Kreis .
6. ^ Diderot op de Kneuterdijk (1) . Archived from the original on October 21, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 14, 2015. 
7. ↑ Jan van Wandelen: Kneuterdijk 22 huis van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt . October 19, 2008. Retrieved January 14, 2015.
8. ↑ Regesta entry Goethe letter exchange
9. ^ Commemorative writings van Gijsbert Jan van Hardenbroek, heer van Bergestein ... enz. (1747-1787), Deel IV, pp. 178-179; 239-240.
10. ↑ Institute of Geosciences ⚒ short outline of the history of earth sciences in Jena . March 31, 2014. Accessed January 14, 2015.
11. ^ Members of the previous academies. Dimitri Alexejewitsch Prince Golitsyn (Gallitzin). Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed March 30, 2015 . 

Web links

Wikisource: Dmitri Alexejewitsch Golitsyn  - sources and full texts

predecessor	Office	successor
Sergei Vasilyevich Saltykov	Russian ambassador to France 1762–1768	Nikolai Konstantinowitsch Chotyn
Alexander Romanovich Vorontsov	Russian envoy to the Netherlands 1769–1782	Arkady Ivanovich Morkov