Ivan VI (Russia)

Ivan VI

Ivan VI Antonovich (born August 12 ^{. Jul} / 23. August 1740 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † July 5 ^jul. / 16th July 1764 ^greg. In the fortress Schlüsselburg ) was from 1740 to 1741 the nominal emperor of Russia . He was one of the tragic figures on the tsar's throne. At the age of two months he was enthroned as tsar and emperor on October 17, 1740 and overthrown on November 25, 1741, spending the rest of his life in captivity.

Life

Ivan Antonovich was the first born child of Anton Ulrich the Elder. J. von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern (1714–1774) and his wife Anna Leopoldowna (1718–1746). Shortly after his birth he was appointed heir to the Russian throne by his great aunt, Empress Anna Ivanovna (1693–1740), a daughter of Ivan V. The empress followed the will of Peter I (1672–1725). Shortly before his death, Peter the Great had stipulated that the reigning tsar could appoint his successor himself. This new regulation of succession to the throne put the Romanovs in great difficulties, since the tsars were now appointed and no longer determined by the birthright, and led to great intrigues at court. Every prince or princess was thus a potential successor and many members of the Romanov family hoped for an accession to the throne.

Emperor Peter III. visits Joann Antonowitsch in the prison of the Schlüsselburg Fortress , woodcut after a painting by F. Burow

Empress Anna appointed his mother and her favorite Ernst Johann von Biron as regent for the minor grandson of her sister Katharina . But Anna Leopoldowna had Biron overthrown after just a few weeks, but she was neither capable nor willing to rule. So it came to a political overthrow as early as 1741. The daughter of Emperor Peter I the Great, Elisabeth Petrovna (1709–1762), dethroned the infant and was able to usurp power for the next 20 years. In contrast to their predecessors, their policy was based on France. With that the new Tsarina ended the good relationship with Austria .

The overthrown regent Anna Leopoldowna and her politically weak husband Anton Ulrich were banished to the Cholmogory monastery (southwest of Arkhangelsk). The deposed emperor Ivan VI. was held separately from his parents. Anton Ulrich and his wife never saw their eldest son again. After the accession of Empress Catherine II (1729–1796) Ivan VI was. murdered in 1764 after 23 years imprisonment in Schluesselburg near Saint Petersburg - allegedly in the course of an attempt at liberation. The memory of him was deliberately erased.

Ivan VI is the only Russian emperor whose burial place is still unknown today.

family

Ivan VI had four younger siblings born in captivity:

Katharina (July 26, 1741– April 21, 1807)
Elisabeth (November 16, 1743– October 20, 1782)
Peter (March 30, 1745– January 30, 1798)
Alexej (March 10, 1746– October 23, 1787)

Ivan's siblings were imprisoned together with their parents, because after Anna Ivanovna's succession to the throne, they were also considered possible contenders to the throne and therefore a potential threat to the respective ruling tsars, even though nothing about their existence was known to the public. They grew up under constant surveillance and with no education whatsoever. Their father was not even allowed to teach them to read or write or teach them his native German. It was not until 1780 that Catherine II released the siblings to her aunt, the queen widow of Denmark, Juliane Marie von Braunschweig , where they lived in seclusion in Horsens in Jutland .

literature

Detlef Jena: Tsar Ivan VI: The prisoner from Schluesselburg . Universitas, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-8004-1464-3 .

Web links

Commons : Ivan VI. - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ In contemporary linguistic usage as well as abroad it remained customary until 1917 to continue speaking of the tsar and has been preserved in the consciousness of posterity. What this affected was not the current dignity of the empire, but the continuation of the specifically Russian reality, in the form of the Moscow tsarist empire, which served as the basis of the new empire. In the 19th century, this led to a conceptual language in literature that was not appropriate to the source and to an outmoded conceptual apparatus in German literature. In: Hans-Joachim Torke: The Russian Tsars 1547–1917 , p. 8; Hans-Joachim Torke: The state-related society in the Moscow Empire , Leiden, 1974, p. 2; Reinhard Wittram: The Russian Empire and its Shape Change, In: Historische Zeitschrift Vol. 187, H. 3 (Jun., 1959), pp. 568-593, p. 569.
^ Carl Schlettwein : Picture of Princess Katharina, granddaughter of Duke Karl Leopold von Meklenburg In: Yearbooks of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology , Volume 41 (1876), pp. 155–156 (with remarks on the further fate of his descendants)

predecessor	Office	successor
Anna	Emperor of Russia 1740–1741	Elisabeth

personal data
SURNAME	Ivan VI
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Ivan VI Antonovich; Иван VI Антонович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian emperor
DATE OF BIRTH	August 23, 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH	St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH	July 16, 1764
Place of death	Key castle

[1] In contemporary linguistic usage as well as abroad it remained customary until 1917 to continue speaking of the tsar and has been preserved in the consciousness of posterity. What this affected was not the current dignity of the empire, but the continuation of the specifically Russian reality, in the form of the Moscow tsarist empire, which served as the basis of the new empire. In the 19th century, this led to a conceptual language in literature that was not appropriate to the source and to an outmoded conceptual apparatus in German literature. In: Hans-Joachim Torke: The Russian Tsars 1547–1917 , p. 8; Hans-Joachim Torke: The state-related society in the Moscow Empire , Leiden, 1974, p. 2; Reinhard Wittram: The Russian Empire and its Shape Change, In: Historische Zeitschrift Vol. 187, H. 3 (Jun., 1959), pp. 568-593, p. 569.

[2] Carl Schlettwein : Picture of Princess Katharina, granddaughter of Duke Karl Leopold von Meklenburg In: Yearbooks of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology , Volume 41 (1876), pp. 155–156 (with remarks on the further fate of his descendants)