An Untypical Story of an Alsatian at the St Petersburg Court

Abstract

The book about Louis Henri de Nicolay, a German-speaking poet from Strasbourg, is much more than a reconstruction of the biography of a “German in Russia”. The multi-author book edited by Rodolphe Baudin and Alexandra Veselova reveals the mechanisms underlying the functioning of intellectual ties between Alsace and Russia. Also, it demonstrates the “exemplary” and unique features of the personal history of a graduate of the University of Strasbourg, who became a tutor of the future Emperor Paul I and then president of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. The authors show the life trajectory of Nicolay in the broad context of the tripartite cultural transfer between France, Germany, and Russia and of the “circulation of knowledge and people” in Europe as a whole. The multifaceted image of the Strasbourg intellectual is recreated through the analysis of his epistolary and poetic heritage, sources on the history of Mon Repos Park (Nicolay's estate near Vyborg), and the study of the mythologisation of his personality in Russian and Soviet culture. The publication of sources of personal origin makes the book more valuable. They are letters of Louis Henri de Nicolay, introduced into scholarly circulation and extensively commented on by the authors of the edition. This research appears to be a landmark in the historiography of intellectual connections in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment.