The activity of Count Karl Ludwig von Ficquelmont in the Russian Empire with a focus on his St. Petersburg salon
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to analyze the activities of the Imperial Envoy, Count Karel Ludwig von Ficquelmont in the Russian Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century, with a special emphasis on his salon in St. Petersburg.
This salon, which Ficquelmont ran in years 1829-1840 with his Russian wife Darya Fyodorovna (Dolly), was located in the house of the Habsburg embassy in St. Petersburg and was the center of not only cultural but also of diplomatic life in the Russian capital.
Interestingly, the cultural and artistic level was combined with the diplomatic and political level, which testifies to Ficquelmont as a host with a really broad intellectual scope. The paper examines how these levels interacted, while pointing out that Ficquelmont made extensive use of his privileges as an influential and court-loved diplomat to help guests in his salon circumvent some Russian obstruction, including severe censorship at that time.
Ficquelmont's most famous guest was the poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, who was inspired by the Habsburg Embassy building for his famous works. In addition, Ficquelmont has connections with the Czech lands, as he and his wife are buried in Teplice, where his daughter married.
Overall, the aim is to introduce Count von Ficquelmont as an educated and cultural diplomat who naturally ran one of the most influential Russian salons of the first half of the nineteenth century. Within the source base, diplomatic reports (Ficquelmont sought greater rapprochement of the Austrian Empire with the Russian Empire) as well as various ego-documents, including the extensive diary of Darya Fyodorovna von Ficquelmont, and marginally contemporary Russian fiction, are used equally.
It was the salons that provided a large number of stimuli for the formation of Russian culture, and it was here that important socio-cultural topics of the time were discussed. It can thus be stated that the salons stood at the very birth and beginnings of Russian public opinion.