Pierre Gilliard

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Pierre Gilliard with the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatjana Nikolajewna in Livadija , 1911

Pierre Gilliard (born May 16, 1879 in Fiez in Vaud , † May 30, 1962 in Lausanne ); worked from 1904 to 1917 as a tutor and tutor for French at the court of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II .

Life

At the beginning of the 20th century, Pierre Gilliard spent thirteen years at the court of the last Russian tsar as tutor and tutor for the five children of the imperial family. He had a particularly close relationship with the ailing Tsarevich Alexej .

Pierre Gilliard and Tsarevich Alexei on board the Standart

After the October Revolution , Pierre Gilliard divided the captivity of the Romanov family in Tsarskoye Selo , Tobolsk and finally Yekaterinburg , where the family was murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918 . For reasons unknown to him, Pierre Gilliard was prevented by the Bolsheviks from joining the family's move to the Villa Ipatiev . He thus escaped being shot and, after an adventurous escape via Vladivostok , Japan, Panama and Trieste, reached Switzerland in August 1920.

In 1922 his report appeared in German: “The tragic fate of the tsarist family”. In his home country he took up teaching at the University of Lausanne in 1926 , where he also became a professor and later rector in 1937.

His privileged position at court enabled him to share very private moments with the imperial family. The amateur photographer left hundreds of photographs from his time at the Russian court.

All photographs, manuscripts, notes and diaries of Pierre Gilliard are in the Cantonal and University Library of Lausanne and in the Musée de l'Elysée there . In 2009 there was an exhibition of Pierre Gilliard's photographs of the royal family in the Moscow State Historical Museum .

Fonts

  • Le tragique déstin de Nicolas II et de sa famille. Paris 1921.
  • Thirteen Years of the Russian Court. A Personal Record of the Last Years and Death of Czar Nicholas II. And His Family. George H. Doran Co., New York 1921 online .

literature

  • Daniel Girardin: Précepteur des Romanovs. Actes Sud, 2005, ISBN 2-7427-5401-6 .
  • Marie Gilliard-Malherbe, A l'étroit dans ma peau de femme. Souvenirs 1900. Lausanne 2001.
  • Alex Capus , sky striker. Twelve portraits. Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8135-0314-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Radio Télévision Suisse, Histoire vivante, October 15, 2017, 9:05 p.m. (in French)
personal data
SURNAME Gilliard, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss educators at the Russian court of the tsars
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Fiez , Vaud
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1962
Place of death Lausanne