Grigory Petrovich Volkonsky

Knes Grigory Petrovich Volkonsky

Coat of arms of the Volkonsky princes

Grigori Petrovich Volkonsky ( Russian : Григорий Петрович Волконский; born April 8, 1808 in Saint Petersburg , † May 6, 1882 in Nice ) was a Russian prince and diplomat in the service of the Russian Empire . He was appointed real councilor and court master at the court of the tsars and was the founder of the Baltic line of the Volkonskis .

Life

After completing his home schooling , he studied from 1819 at the Richelieu Lyceum in Odessa , the predecessor of the later University of Odessa . In 1820 his father sent him to Paris to study . He returned to Saint Petersburg in 1822 and began his service in the Foreign Ministry , and in 1828 he was appointed ambassador to Naples in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies . In 1829 he was appointed chamberlain and in 1829 was employed as a civil servant in the Asia Department of the Foreign Ministry. From 1831 to 1839 he was head of the archaeological commission at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome . In 1835 he was appointed chamberlain and in the early 1840s was envoy to the Russian mission at the papal court in the Vatican . From 1839 to 1842 he was assistant to the trustee and from 1842 to 1845 trustee of the Petersburg school district and from 1845 trustee of the Odessa school district. From 1847 he was a civil servant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the same year he was made an honorary member of the University of Saint Petersburg and in 1850 an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Arts . In 1852 he was awarded the rank of court master and in 1862 the rank of chief court master . In recognition of his services he was awarded the Russian Order of St. Stanislaus .

Grigory Petrovich Wokonski was also known for his musical talent, he was considered an excellent singer with a great bass . He belonged to a circle of artists, was friends with Russian intellectuals , such as Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin , and organized literary societies . He also appeared as a singer in the imperial theater. During his stay in Rome , he promoted Russian artists and lived in the Palazzo Salviati.

Origin and family

The couple Grigori Petrovich Volkonski and Countess Maria von Benckendorff (around 1840)

GP Volkonsky was a descendant of the Russian Rurikids from the family of the Volkonsky princes . His father Pyotr Michailowitsch Volkonsky (1776-1852) was a Russian field marshal who was married to his cousin, the lady-in-waiting Sophia Grigoryevna Volkonskja (1787-1888). In the first marriage Grigori Petrovich was married to Maria Countess von Benckendorff (1820-1880) and in the second marriage with Lydia Waxel (1834-1897). His descendants were:

• Elisabeth Grigoryevna Volkonskaya (1838-1897), she was the author of several books on Catholic apologetics . She published the book "The Clan of Princess Volkonsky" and was married to Prince Mikhail Sergeyevich Volkonsky (1832-1909).
• Pyotr Grigoryevich (1843–1896) was a stable master at the imperial court. He fell ill with a mental illness in the mid-1870s. His wife was Princess Vera Lwow (1848–1924).

The second wife (from 1881) was Lydia Alexandrowna Waxel (1834-1897), his housekeeper. After Volkonsky's death, she inherited the estate in Bessarabia and all his movable property and lived in Odessa.

literature

• Stackelberg, Otto Magnus from: Genealogical manual of the Estonian knighthood, Bd .: 3, Görlitz, [1930] [1] , p. 290

Web links

• Family table Grigori Petrovich Volkonsky (Russian)
• Short biography of Grigory Petrovich Volkonsky (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Palazzo Salviati = en: Palazzo Salviati (Rome)