Peter II (Russia)

Peter II

. Peter II Alexeyevich ( Russian Пётр Алексеевич II ; born October 12, ^jul. / 23. October  1715 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † January 18 ^jul. / 29. January  1730 ^greg. In Moscow ) was emperor of Russia from 1727 to 1730.

Life

childhood

Peter Alexejewitsch was a grandson of Peter I. His parents were the "unfortunate" Tsarevich Alexei of Russia and his wife Charlotte Christine , daughter of Duke Ludwig Rudolf von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . His mother died shortly after he was born, and his father died in prison three years later. As a child, Peter grew up mostly with his grandmother, Tsarina Evdokija .

Reign

After the death of Tsarina Catherine I , the widow of Peter I , Peter II ascended the throne on May 17, 1727 at the age of eleven. In her will, Katharina had designated Alexander Menshikov and her two daughters Anna and Elisabeth as the boy's guardians. Elisabeth had no political ambitions; Anna left Russia under Menshikov's pressure and went with her husband to Kiel, where her son Peter Ulrich was born in February 1728, later Peter III.

Menshikov, one of the richest men in Russia, tried to strengthen his power with the help of the young tsar. He arranged an engagement of his daughter to Peter II. But the influential royal family of the Dolgoruki despised the upstart and drove his disempowerment. On September 20, 1727, he was arrested and exiled with his family to Berjosow in the then Tobolsk governorate .

As tsar and emperor, Peter was only a plaything of the masterminds Menshikov , Dolgoruki and Golitsyn (1665–1737). Under the influence of the Dolgorukis, Peter II moved the court to Moscow and was crowned there on March 7, 1728 . In December 1729 he got engaged to Yekaterina Dolgorukowa (1712-1745).

death

The marriage was to take place on February 2, 1730. At the end of January, however, the Tsar returned home sick from the hunt and died shortly after of smallpox . He had sat on the Russian throne for two years and nine months. Peter II was buried in Moscow. He and Ivan VI. are the only tsars who were not buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral after the founding of St. Petersburg .

With his death, the lineage of male Romanovs came to an end. The Supreme Privy Council failed to agree on a male heir to the throne. The choice fell on his second half-aunt (his father's half-cousin), Anna Ivanovna .

literature

• This article is largely substantiated by the biography of Henri Troyat : Peter the Great. Tsar, reformer, despot. Heyne Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-453-55148-6 , pp. 364–365
• Hans-Joachim Torke (Ed.): The Russian Tsars 1547–1917. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-42105-9
• Edith M. Almedingen: The Romanows. The story of a dynasty. Russia 1613-1917. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main 1992, ISBN 3-548-34952-8

Web links

Commons : Peter II.  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Peter II
• Biographies , Chronos (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Epitaph at the grave of Peter II. Inscription according to TD Panowa: Das Kremlgrab , Moscow 2003 (Russian), p. 83
2. ↑ In contemporary parlance at home and abroad, it remained common to continue speaking of the tsar , contrary to the dignity of the empire , in order to emphasize the continuation of the specifically Russian reality in the form of the Moscow tsarist empire, which was 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". Hans-Joachim Torke in: 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 Volume 187, Issue 3 (June 1959), R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1959, pp. 568–593, here p. 569.

predecessor	Office	successor
Catherine I.	Emperor of Russia 1727–1730	Anna