Yevgeny Sergeyevich Botkin

Yevgeny Sergeyevich Botkin

Botkin with the Grand Duchesses Anastasia and Maria

Yevgeny Sergejewitsch Botkin ( Russian Евгений Сергеевич Боткин ; * May 27, 1865 in Tsarskoye Selo , today Pushkin ; †  July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg ) was the personal physician of the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II. On February 3, 2016 he was appointed by the Russian Orthodox Church canonized.

Life

He was the son of Sergei Botkin (1832-1889), who worked as a personal physician under Emperor Alexander II and Alexander III. served. He studied at the University of St. Petersburg as well as in Berlin and Heidelberg . He turned down a position offered to him in 1889 as personal physician for the seriously ill Georgi Alexandrowitsch Romanov . A phase of relative poverty followed after his student days, which only ended when Botkin got a job as chief physician in a hospital. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 he received an award for his services as a volunteer in the hospital train of St. George's Hospital. From April 13, 1908, he was the personal physician of the tsarist family. As such, he treated the hemophilia of Tsarevich Alexei . While assistant doctors were also called in for the imperial grand duchesses and the tsarevich, Botkin was solely responsible for the well-being of the empress Alexandra Feodorovna . Since Botkin became strongly religious with increasing age and also had a good knowledge of German, a special relationship developed between the personal doctor and the empress. Botkin used to visit Alexandra Feodorovna twice a day.

Botkin accompanied the last Russian imperial family to Yekaterinburg after the October Revolution . Believing that Nicholas II and his family would be brought to Great Britain , he wrote his children a letter asking them to wait for him in England. On July 17, 1918, Botkin was shot dead by the Bolsheviks in the basement of the Ipatiev House . After the conquest of the city by the White Guards , an unfinished letter from Botkins to his brother Alexander was found, in which he expressed that he no longer saw any chance of survival in captivity. The letter ends with the statement that he will do his medical duty to the end.

Botkin was married and had four children. After his wife Olga had started a relationship with their children's German teacher, she divorced him in 1910. His two eldest sons Dimitri and Juri died in the First World War . His son Gleb and daughter Tatiana became strong supporters of Anna Anderson , who claimed to be identical to the Grand Duchess Anastasia , after the murder of the royal family .

Web links

Commons : Eugene Botkin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Russian patriot website dedicated to the martyrs of the 20th century with a biography of Botkins
• Botkin biography ( memento from March 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (Russian)
• Biography on alexanderpalace.org
• Establishment of the Sobor of the Russian Orthodox Church on the general canonization of a series of locally venerated saints (Russian)