From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768-1870
In a manuscript in a Russian archive, an anonymous German eyewitness describes what he saw in Moscow during Napoleon's Russian campaign. Who was this nameless memoirist, and what brought him to Moscow in 1812? The search for answers to those questions uncovers a remarkable story of German and Russian life at the dawn of the modern age.

Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch (1768-1835), the manuscript's author, was a man always on the move and reinventing himself. He spent half his life in the Holy Roman Empire, and the other half in Russia. He was a barber-surgeon, an actor, and a merchant, as well as a Catholic, a Freemason, and a Lutheran pastor. He saw the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, founded a business that flourished for sixty years, and took part in the Enlightenment, the consumer revolution, the Pietist Awakening, and Russia's colonization of the Black Sea steppe. A restless wanderer and seeker, but also the progenitor of an influential merchant family, he was a characteristic figure both of the Age of Revolution and of the bourgeois era that followed.

Presenting a broad panorama of life in the German lands and Russia from the Old Regime to modernity, this microhistory explores how individual people shape, and are shaped by, the historical forces of their time.
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From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768-1870
In a manuscript in a Russian archive, an anonymous German eyewitness describes what he saw in Moscow during Napoleon's Russian campaign. Who was this nameless memoirist, and what brought him to Moscow in 1812? The search for answers to those questions uncovers a remarkable story of German and Russian life at the dawn of the modern age.

Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch (1768-1835), the manuscript's author, was a man always on the move and reinventing himself. He spent half his life in the Holy Roman Empire, and the other half in Russia. He was a barber-surgeon, an actor, and a merchant, as well as a Catholic, a Freemason, and a Lutheran pastor. He saw the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, founded a business that flourished for sixty years, and took part in the Enlightenment, the consumer revolution, the Pietist Awakening, and Russia's colonization of the Black Sea steppe. A restless wanderer and seeker, but also the progenitor of an influential merchant family, he was a characteristic figure both of the Age of Revolution and of the bourgeois era that followed.

Presenting a broad panorama of life in the German lands and Russia from the Old Regime to modernity, this microhistory explores how individual people shape, and are shaped by, the historical forces of their time.
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From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768-1870

From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768-1870

by Alexander M. Martin
From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768-1870

From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars: One Family's Odyssey, 1768-1870

by Alexander M. Martin

Hardcover

$135.00 
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Overview

In a manuscript in a Russian archive, an anonymous German eyewitness describes what he saw in Moscow during Napoleon's Russian campaign. Who was this nameless memoirist, and what brought him to Moscow in 1812? The search for answers to those questions uncovers a remarkable story of German and Russian life at the dawn of the modern age.

Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch (1768-1835), the manuscript's author, was a man always on the move and reinventing himself. He spent half his life in the Holy Roman Empire, and the other half in Russia. He was a barber-surgeon, an actor, and a merchant, as well as a Catholic, a Freemason, and a Lutheran pastor. He saw the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, founded a business that flourished for sixty years, and took part in the Enlightenment, the consumer revolution, the Pietist Awakening, and Russia's colonization of the Black Sea steppe. A restless wanderer and seeker, but also the progenitor of an influential merchant family, he was a characteristic figure both of the Age of Revolution and of the bourgeois era that followed.

Presenting a broad panorama of life in the German lands and Russia from the Old Regime to modernity, this microhistory explores how individual people shape, and are shaped by, the historical forces of their time.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780192844378
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 06/03/2022
Series: Oxford Studies in Modern European History
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: 9.47(w) x 6.43(h) x 1.16(d)

About the Author

Alexander M. Martin, Professor of History, University of Notre Dame

Alexander M. Martin is Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries:Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I (1997) and Enlightened Metropolis: Constructing Imperial Moscow, 1762-1855 (2013).

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart I: Uncertain Beginnings, 1768-17901. The Barber-Surgeon from Silesia2. An Irresistible Inclination to the Stage3. The Printer's DaughterPart II: Actor on the German Stage, 1790-18094. Theater, Revolution, and Freemasonry5. The Landgrave's Theater6. Excellent Acting and Upright Character7. The Land of Extremes8. Curtain CallPart III: Merchant of Imperial Russia, 1809-18209. A So-Called Cosmetics Store10. The Real Russia11. The Lord's Will12. A Man of ConsequencePart IV: Pastor on the Black Sea Steppe, 1820-183513. New Russia14. The Sage of KharkovPart V: Legacies15. Memory16. Honored CitizensConclusion
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