Ivan Andreevich Ostermann

Count Iwan Ostermann

Count Ivan Andrejewitsch Ostermann ( Russian Иван Андреевич Остерман ; * 23 April ^July / 4 May  1725 ^greg .; † 18 April ^July / 30 April  1811 ^greg. In Moscow ) was the Russian Imperial (Vice) Chancellor (1775– 1797) and cabinet minister, senator (1781), chief conductor of the College of Foreign Affairs (1783–1797), real secret council, knight of the St. Alexander and St. Andrew orders and of all Russian civil orders in general.

Life

Coat of arms of Count Ostermann (since 1730)

origin

Count Iwan Ostermann was a son of the Bochum- born, later, until 1741 almost all-powerful Russian Regency Council and Count Heinrich Johann Friedrich Ostermann (Andrej Iwanowitsch Osterman) and the Marfa Iwanowna Streschnewa (1698–1781). The mother's father was the Russian court official Ivan Radionowitsch Streschnew from an old boyar family who were closely related to the Romanovs and who had already produced the wife of a tsar in Evdokia and who had helped overthrow the patriarch Nikon in 1658 . His older brother was Count Fyodor Andreyevich Ostermann (1723-1804), Russian Lieutenant General and Privy Council and civil governor of the province Moscow .

His father Andrei Ivanovich, who had been powerful until then , had fallen out of favor with Elizabeth , as he had opposed Elizabeth's accession to the throne . When she finally became empress in 1741, she took revenge on him, first sentenced him to death by beheading and then cycling , but pardoned him in 1742, when he had already been brought to the scaffold , and sentenced him to lifelong exile in Berezovo in Siberia where he died five years later.

The disfavor of the new empress extended to Ivan as the condemned son's son: the 16-year-old was demoted in 1741 like his older brother Fyodor from the guard - to the army - captain . The mother, one of the most respected court ladies, went to Siberia with her exiled husband and only returned after his death in 1747.

Diplomatic career

After his military demotion, like his brother, Ivan was assigned to field regiments in the Bashkir region , but both of them soon returned. Iwan Ostermann then went on a long (study) trip through Europe. He began his career as a diplomat and statesman ten years after the disgraceful death of his father, in 1757, still under Empress Elisabeth, at the Russian embassy in Paris . Appointed in 1760, since 1762 under Empress Catherine II , he was the Russian envoy in Stockholm until 1774 .

Empress Katharina appointed him Imperial Vice Chancellor in 1775, de facto in the office of Imperial Chancellor (" Grand Chancellor "), which his father actually held until his overthrow by Elisabeth in 1741. Only until then, the father had been denied the formal top title of Grand Chancellor, as a native foreigner. The son maintained the office of Reich Chancellor until 1797, was also appointed Senator in 1781 and from 1783, also until 1797, increased the position of Chief Conductor of the College of Foreign Affairs.

When Iwan Ostermann, together with his brother Fyodor, received the nobility diploma from Empress Catherine II on October 14, 1790, which documents the count status conferred on his father in 1730, he held the titles of Real Privy Councilor, Vice Chancellor and Senator, and has also held a position since 1763 also the military rank of Major General , while his older brother was Lieutenant General , Real Privy Councilor, and Senator.

Age portrait of Ostermann

Almost immediately after Katharina's death († 1796), Count Ostermann was honored by her successor with the nominal title of Grand Chancellor, but Ostermann, 72 years old, finally resigned as Chancellor and Chief Conductor of the College of Foreign Affairs in 1797, following the pressure of Emperor Paul I and spent his last years in Moscow.

family

Count Ostermann entered into marriage relatively late. He took Alexandra Ivanovna Talysina (* 1745) as his wife, a daughter of Admiral Ivan Lukianowitsch Talysin (1700–1777). When she died on February 17, 1793, she was still in her middle years.

In 1782 Ivan Andreevich inherited an old estate in the center of Moscow from Vasily Ivanovich Streschnew (1707–1782), his maternal uncle . Around that time, the main building, which has housed the Russian National Museum of Folk Art and Decorative Design since 1981 , got its current appearance. Ivan Andreevich died in this house in 1811 at the age of 86.

Ivan Andreevich Ostermann had no children of his own. His sister Anna (1724–1769) was married to the Russian general en chef , Count Matwei Andrejewitsch Tolstoy (1701–1763). His grandson, who later became the Russian infantry general Alexander Tolstoy (1770-1857), was appointed as his heir and so his great-nephew Alexander Ivanovich, who was also appointed heir by Ivan's brother Fyodor († 1804), had the family name since 1796 Ostermann-Tolstoy . The latter did not leave any descendants of his own, but was married to a princess Galitzina. Their closest relatives became heirs, and so a Paris-based branch of the Galitzin family has been nicknamed Ostermann since 1863.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ostermann, Ivan Graf von
2. ^ New genealogical Reichs- und Staats-Handbuch (1794), p. 135
3. ^ ^{A b c d} Georg Adolf Wilhelm von Helbig , Russian favorites , Tübingen 1809, p. 81
4. ↑ ^{a b} Klueting, Harm, "Ostermann, Andrej Ivanovič Graf von", in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 19 (1998), pp. 619–620 ( online version )
5. ↑ Helbig, p. 79
6. ↑ Rudolph Dietsch , New Yearbooks for Philology and Pedagogy , 6th year Leipzig 1860, p. 106
7. ^ Fedor Ostermann
8. ↑ Helbig, p. 77
9. ↑ Helbig, p. 74
10. ↑ ^{a b c d} Alexander Kaplunovskiy, "Even in Moscow I have reason to be satisfied" , (2014), p. 178 f.
11. ↑ Helbig, p. 79
12. ↑ Helbig, p. 79
13. ↑ ^{a b c d} Erik Amburger database: Graf Ostermann, Ivan (accessed on October 15, 2014)
14. ↑ Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels (GHdA), Volume X, Limburg an der Lahn 1999, p. 80
15. ^ ^{A b} Arthur Kleinschmidt , Russia's History and Politics , Kassel 1877, p. 502
16. ↑ fine Art images: Portrait of Admiral Iwan Lukianowitsch Talysin (1700–1777) (accessed on October 13, 2014)
17. ↑ ^{a b} Elena McPherson, Count Ostermann House (accessed October 12, 2014)
18. ↑ Russian National Museum of Folk Art and Decorative Design (accessed October 14, 2014)
19. ^ Voice of Russia (April 21, 2007), A museum from Krasnodar shows its collection of German art in Moscow (accessed October 14, 2014)
20. ^ Matvej Andreevič Tolstoj
21. ↑ Eugen Schuyler, Memories of Count Leo Tolstoy , Bremen 2013, p. 22
22. ↑ GHdA, Volume IV, Limburg an der Lahn 1978, p. 21
23. ^ City of Bochum: From the descendants of Count Ostermann (accessed on October 14, 2014)

literature

• Erik Amburger , Heinrich Ostermann from the Westphalian peasant and bourgeois family, the Russian statesman, and the Count Ostermann , in: Contributions to Westphalian family research 18 (1960), pp. 31–56
• Erik Amburger and Friedrich von Klocke , the Russian statesman Heinrich Ostermann, his Westphalian ancestors and Russian descendants , Berlin 1961
• Georg Adolf Wilhelm von Helbig , Russian favorites , Tübingen 1809
• Alexander Kaplunowski : "In Moscow, too, I have reason to be satisfied." Christian von Schlözer's private correspondence with the family. Academic lifeworlds, knowledge and culture transfer in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century (Mainz contributions to the history of Eastern Europe, Volume 5), 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-11816-5 , p. 178 f.
• Arthur Kleinschmidt , Russia's History and Politics , Kassel 1877
• Harm and Edeltraud Klueting , Graf Ostermann, certificates and registers , Amsterdam 1972
• Harm Klueting, Heinrich Graf Ostermann , Bochum 1976
• Helmut Potthoff, Ostermann , in: Zeitschrift Roland 26 (Dortmund 1992), p. 25

Web links

Commons : Iwan Andrejewitsch Ostermann  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Graf Ostermann, Ivan in the Erik Amburger database of the Institute for East and Southeast European Studies , Regensburg

predecessor	Office	successor
Nikita Ivanovich Panin	Russian envoy to Sweden 1760–1774	Ivan Matveevich Simolin
Alexander Golitsyn	Russian Vice Chancellor 1774–1796	Alexander Borisovich Kurakin
Nikita Ivanovich Panin (until 1780)	Russian chancellor 1796–1797	Alexander Andreevich Besborodko