Michail Michailowitsch Speransky

Michail Michailowitsch Speransky.

Count Mikhail Speransky ( Russian Михаил Михайлович Сперанский , scientific. Transliteration Mikhail Michajlowič Speranskij ; born January 1 ^{. Jul} / 12. January  1772 ^greg. In Tscherkutino , Vladimir province , † February 11 ^jul. / 23. February  1839 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a mathematics professor, eminent Russian statesman and liberal reformer.

Life

Speranski was the son of a village priest and was educated in a spiritual seminary. Instead of a clerical career, he rose quickly in civil administration and was from 1807 to 1812 the most influential advisor to Tsar Alexander I. In 1808, Speranski was appointed deputy minister of justice and head of the law commission. On behalf of Alexander, he worked out a fundamental constitutional reform in 1809 with a strict separation of powers and the abolition of serfdom , from which the tsar only implemented individual sections such as the advisory State Council.

In 1810, Speranski became the emperor's personal state secretary, and Ignaz Aurelius Feßler accepted him into the Freemasonry , after having worked with Feßler, Count Rasumovsky, Minister of Education, and Minister of Police Balashev, on the activities of the Masonic lodges commissioned by Tsar Alexander I , as a result of which Freemasonry in Russia was approved.

After his fall in 1812 - he was accused of collaborating with the French - he was exiled to Perm . In 1814 he was recalled and in 1816 appointed governor of Penza . As Governor General of Siberia from 1819 to 1821 he took care of the exiles himself. In 1824, Speranski was appointed to the State Council, but developed little political influence. The publication of a legal code of 1834 was largely due to his work.

Representations

• Various portraits of Speranski are known, which were created by both Russian and English painters such as George Dawe (1781–1829). Tsar Alexander I invited Dawe to St. Petersburg and commissioned him to portray the Russian generals who had distinguished themselves in the war against Napoleon. One of the most important portraits of Speranski was created around 1838 and is attributed to the painter Wasili Alexandrowitsch Golicke, who worked for Dawe. It shows Speranski in a dark frock coat with a white collar and a medal, sitting on a red armchair; in front of him is a map, a book and a surveying circle, a pen in hand. After Dawes's death in 1829, Golicke studied at the Art Academy in St. Petersburg and later created numerous portraits of members of the imperial family, the nobility and important Russian politicians as an independent portrait and genre painter.

Trivia

Leo Tolstoy gives an apparently authentic description of the person of Speranski ( War and Peace . Book 2, Part 3, No. 5 ff.).

literature

• Marc Raeff: Michael Speransky, statesman of imperial Russia, 1772–1839 . 2nd revised edition. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff 1969.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurerlexikon. 5th, revised and expanded new edition. Herbig, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7766-2478-7 .