Heinrich Friedrich von Storch

Heinrich Friedrich von Storch , known in Russia as Andrej Karlowitsch Schtorch ( Russian Андрей Карлович Шторх , scientific transliteration Andrej Karlovič Štorch ; * February 18 ^jul. / March 1,  1766 ^greg. In Riga ; † November 1 ^jul. / 13. November  1835 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a German-Russian economist ; he comes from the wealthy noble family von Storch in the Bad Doberan district .

Life

Heinrich Friedrich von Storch was born as the son of Karl Friedrich von Storch on February 18, 1766 in Riga . After attending the cathedral school there (until 1784), he then studied in Jena and Heidelberg . During a trip through southern Germany and France in 1786 he wrote a collection of articles which he had published in Heidelberg in 1787 at his own expense (sketches, scenes and remarks, collected on a trip through France). This publication made him known.

In 1789 he received a call to the Military Academy in St. Petersburg as a professor of fine arts. In 1794 his first important statistical work (Painting of St. Petersburg) appeared in two volumes, published in Riga. This work received a great response and was soon translated into various European languages. In 1804 he was accepted into the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences ; 1808 admission to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

From 1799 he taught the daughters of Tsar Paul : Alexandra Pawlowna Romanowa (1783-1801), later wife of Archduke Joseph of Austria , and Helena Pawlowna Romanowa , later wife of Hereditary Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Mecklenburg (-Schwerin). He prepared both especially for the national conditions of Mecklenburg and Hungary, in order to prepare the princesses for the upcoming weddings.

Von Storch took on the same task with the princesses Maria Romanow-Holstein-Gottorp (1786-1859), who later became the wife of Grand Duke Carl Friedrich of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and Katharina Pawlowna of Holstein-Gottorf (1788-1819) Queen Catherine of Württemberg.

In 1801 he was appointed reader to Tsarina Maria Fjodorowna (1759-1828), born Sophie Dorothee Auguste Luise von Württemberg . Later he also taught the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich (1796–1855), who later became Tsar Nicholas I, and Michael Pawlowitsch Romanow (1798–1849).

His lessons served as a template for von Storch's most important scientific work, the "Cours d'économie politique ou exposition des principes qui déterminent la prospérité des nations". In 1819 the book was published in German with comments by Karl H. Rau. For years it was considered the most important work on political economy and has a special meaning for the history of economic literature in Russia. His introduction of Adam Smith's four-stage model of civilization in Russia in a modified form (three-stage theory) attracted attention .

In 1830 he was appointed vice-president of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, the first in the history of the academy, and in the same year also a privy councilor.

Heinrich Friedrich von Storch died on November 1, 1835 in St. Petersburg. His grave is in the German Cemetery on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg.

plant

Von Storch knew the economic situation in Russia very well. In his works he illustrated his thoughts again and again with practical examples from Russian life. He turned out to be a fierce opponent of serfdom , which he made largely responsible for the backwardness of the Russian economy. He also criticized the gloomy conditions in the Russian judiciary, the extravagance and indebtedness of the dignitaries. That is why the book fell victim to censorship in Russia.

Von Storch was based on his work mainly on the works of Adam Smith, but was also of Jean-Baptiste Say , Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi , Anne Robert Jacques Turgot and Jeremy Bentham influences whose lyrics he partly took literally. Among other things, he developed the theory of “internal goods”. By this he understood ideal possessions of a person or a people, such as moral strength, intelligence, aesthetics, culture etc. For von Storch there is a connection between the economic and cultural development of a country. Accordingly, he thought about how Russia could overcome its cultural and economic backwardness towards Western Europe and tried to develop a theory of civilization from an economic point of view.

marriage

• 1. Marriage to Wilhelmine von Löwenstern from Ludwigsburg, signed on June 28, 1791.
• 2. Marriage to Wilhelmine Fuhrlohn (born on August 2, 1778 in Saint Petersburg, died there on May 26, 1863), closed on August 28, 1797 in Saint Petersburg.

parents

• Father: Karl Friedrich von Storch, from Königsberg, 53 years old, died in Riga in May 1778. He was cand. Theol., Government secretary and pension holder.
• Mother: Sophia Margaretha Westphal from Eutin, 72 years old, died on December 19, 1801 in Saint Petersburg.
• Marriage in Riga on June 3, 1763.

children

• Maria Andrejewna Schtorch, October 27, 1804 - July 26, 1863
• Peter Andrejewitsch Schtorch, September 3, 1802 - January 28, 1847
• Alexander Andrejewitsch Schtorch ( ru : Александр Андреевич Шторх ), December 4, 1804 - November 5 (October?) 1870, was involved in the Decembrist revolt of 1825.
• Plato Andrejewitsch Schtorch, born March 10, 1809 in Pavlovsk. He was a real councilor and married to Emilie Wendel.
• Katharina Andreevna Schtorch, April 15, 1810 - March 31, 1892 in Saint Petersburg.
• Konstantin Andrejewitsch Schtorch, July 13, 1811 - March 2, 1870 in Pavlovsk, was a State Councilor.
• Nikolaj Andrejewitsch Schtorch ( ru : Николай Андреевич Шторх ), July 3, 1816 in Saint Petersburg - December 12, 1877 in Saint Petersburg, was a permanent state secretary and from 1863 to 1877 director of the Imperial Foundling House. He had the title of Real Privy Councilor.

Fonts

• Painting of St. Petersburg. 2 vols. Hartknoch, Riga 1794. (vol. 1. digitized and full text in the German text archive , vol. 2. digitalized and full text in the German text archive )
• Cours d'économie politique ou exposition des principes qui déterminent la prospérité des nations. St. Petersburg 1815.
• Statistical overview of the governorships of the Russian Empire according to their most remarkable cultural conditions. Riga 1795.
• Historical-statistical paintings of the Russian Empire. Riga, 1797-1803.
• Russia under Alexander I. St. Petersburg 1803-1811.
• Le revenu national considéré sous un nouveau point de vue. published by the Academy with further articles in 1819.
• Considérations sur la nature du income national. Paris 1824, in German in Halle 1825.
• To the criticism of the concept of national wealth. Saint Petersburg 1827.

literature

• Roderick E. McGrew: Dilemmas of Development: Baron Heinrich Friedrich Storch (1766-1835) on the Growth of Imperial Russia . In: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas , Vol. 24, (1976), No. 1, pp. 31-71.
• Anton L. Dmitriev: Heinrich von Storch's work from a Russian perspective , Metropolis 2005, article (Download [1] )
• Bertram Schefold: Introduction to Heinrich Friedrich von Storch: Cours d'économie politique , volumes 1–6 in the series Historia Scientiarum (economics). An edition program of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation on the history of science in Germany. Edited by Bernhard Fabian. Olms, Hildesheim 1997, pp. 1-70.
• Gangolf von Kieseritzky :  Storch, Heinrich Friedrich von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 36, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, pp. 437-439.
• Carola L. Gottzmann , Petra Hörner: Lexicon of the German-language literature of the Baltic States and St. Petersburg . De Gruyter, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-11-019338-1 , p. 1256-1258 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Friedrich von Storch in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography (russian)