House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov
| House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov | |||
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 Dynastic coat of arms of the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov | |||
| Country | Russian Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Denmark | ||
| Parent house | |||
| Titles |
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| Founder | Adolf, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp | ||
| Founding year | 1544 (with the addition "Romanov" since 1762) | ||
| Ethnicity | Germanic, Slavic | ||
| Cadet branches |
Several branches
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The House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov, earlier known as the House of Holstein-Gottorp, is based on a German royal and imperial house founded in 1544 by Adolf, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf (1526–1586), the second son of Frederick I (1471–1533), Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, later King of Denmark and Sophie Princess of Pomerania (1498–1568) from Stettin, as a cadet-branch of the House of Oldenburg. The direct male line of the Romanovs ended when Elizabeth died childless in 1762. As a result, her nephew Peter III, an agnatic member of the House of Holstein-Gottorp, ascended to the throne and adopted his Romanov mother’s house name.
Contents
History
The paternal ancestry of the Oldenburgs themselves is obscure other than the fact that they are Germanic, emerging as counts in an area known as Oldenburg which was for a time a vassal-state of the Duchy of Saxony. Initially the dynasty were Dukes of Holstein-Gottorp and in addition to this co-ruled both the Duchy of Schleswig and the Duchy of Holstein, with the senior Oldenburg line who were also Kings of Denmark.
A junior line became Kings of Sweden, while the senior inherited the Russian Empire through Anna Petrovna of Russia, daughter of Peter the Great from the original House of Romanov, with the first monarch being Peter III of Russia. His reign last only a few months however as he was assassinated in a plot purportedly led by his wife Catherine the Great. Assassination of monarchs would be a fate suffered several times during their reign over Russia. Inspired by the traditions of chivalry Paul I was even elected Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. He openly accused Napoleon Bonaparte of being the anti-Christ for his Jacobin Judeophilia and joined the Second Coalition in the French Revolutionary Wars, though later allied with him once he became more conservative.
During the early 1800s, Russia captured Finland from Sweden during the Finnish War and the Romanovs became Grand Dukes of Finland. After the Napoleonic Wars, Russia was part of the Holy Alliance, opposed to further Jacobinical activity across Europe. The Romanovs also became Kings of Poland after the Congress of Vienna; a territory the Russian Empire would gradually intergrate. The program of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality, devised by Sergey Uvarov, was adopted during the time of Nicholas I. His successor Alexander II emancipated the serfs and carried out several other reforms but was also confronted with the separatist January Uprising. He was assassinated by terrorist group Narodnaya Volya, which, heavily saturated with Jews, led to ethnic unrest following this.
Germanization
The daughter of Peter I the Great (reigned 1682–1725) and Catherine I (reigned 1725–27), Elizabeth grew up to be a beautiful, charming, intelligent, and vivacious young woman. Despite her talents and popularity, particularly among the guards, she played only a minor political role during the reigns of Peter II (reigned 1727–30) and Empress Anna (reigned 1730–40). But when Anna Leopoldovna assumed the regency for her son Ivan VI (1740–41) and threatened Elizabeth with banishment to a convent, the young princess allowed herself to be influenced by the French ambassador and members of the Russian court who hoped to reduce German domination over Russian affairs and reverse Russia’s pro-Austrian, anti-French foreign policy. On the night of November 24–25 (December 5–6), 1741, she staged a coup d’état, arresting the infant emperor, his mother, and their chief advisers; after summoning all the civil and ecclesiastical notables of St. Petersburg, Elizabeth was proclaimed empress of Russia. With Elizabeth, the Romanovs of the male line died out in 1762, but the name was conserved by the branch of the House of Holstein-Gottorp that then mounted the Russian throne in the person of Elizabeth’s nephew Peter III. From 1762 to 1796 Peter III’s widow, a German princess of the house of Anhalt-Zerbst, ruled as Catherine II. With Paul I, Peter III’s son, a Romanov of Holstein-Gottorp became emperor again.
- Peter was accused by the regent Sophia of introducing German customs; he always liked to wear German clothes; idle gossip said that his father was a German surgeon. The Russian Academy of Sciences, which he founded with the aid of German and a few French scholars, has issued its publications in German until a recent date. The new administrative terminology, necessitated by Peter's reforms, was largely borrowed from his western neighbor. From that time until now the rank of Russian army officers lias been designated by German titles, while Hofmeister, Stallmeister, Kammerjunker, Kammerfrau were naturalized in the usage of the Russian court. Even the new capital, symbol of all his dreams of a westernized Russia, was called St. Petersburg. Since the time of Peter the Great (the beginning of the eighteenth century) the influence of Germans in Russia had been growing. The German element was gaining predominance in the bureaucracy, marriages with German princes and princesses were contracted by members of the dynasty; in the eighteenth century the male line of the house of Romanov (which had been on the throne since 1613) died out, and by the marriage of a Romanov heiress with a member of the Oldenburg dynasty the house of Holstein-Gottorp, a new dynasty, a German one, came to the throne. Peter's elder daughter, Anna, married Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp. When Anna, widow of the German Duke of Courland, came to the throne in 1730. the court became a facsimile of Berlin. Ernst Biren. her lover, was made chamberlain, Lewenwold majordomo of the court, Ostermann had charge of foreign affairs, Korff and Kayserling were heads of embassies, Lascy, Münnich of Oldenburg, Bismarck and Gustav Biren, generals. In the corps of cadets for young nobles founded by Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, the history of Germany was taught to the exclusion of that of Russia.
- The succession devolved in 1741 on Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great. An anti-German reaction had placed the Empress Elizabeth on the throne [...]. When she came to die, however, she could do no better than appoint as her successor, Peter III, the son of Peter's elder daughter Anna and Karl Friedrich Ulrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp (belonging to a cadet line of the family of Oldenburg), with whom the half-German dynasty of Oldenburg-Romanov or Holstein-Gottorp began in 1762. Peter III established the dynasty of Romanoff-Oldenburg, which ended with the deposition of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. Peter III had a short and unpopular reign. Although he was a grandson of Peter the Great, his father was the duke of Holstein, so Peter III was raised in a German Lutheran environment. Russians therefore considered him a foreigner. Making no secret of his contempt for all things Russian, Peter created deep resentment by forcing Prussian military drills on the Russian military, attacking the Orthodox Church, and depriving Russia of a military victory by establishing a sudden alliance with Prussia. Making use of the discontent and fearing for her own position, Peter III's wife, Catherine, deposed her husband in a coup, and her lover Aleksey Orlov subsequently murdered him. Thus, in June 1762 a German princess who had no legitimate claim to the Russian throne became Catherine II, empress of Russia (1762-96). After the termination of the reign of Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, in 1762, the official representatives of the Russian national interests and aspirations, the tzars, were half alien and Romanovs only by courtesy, or better by presumption. In reality they were Holstein-Gottorp-Romanovs, issuing from the marriage of a daughter of Peter the Great and a prince of Holstein-Gottorp. They invariably married foreign princesses, mostly German.[1]
On 2 March (15 March N.S.) 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favour of his brother Michael, who refused it the following day. Nicholas and all his immediate family were murdered in July 1918 at Yekaterinburg.
Titles
Emperors of Russia from the House of Holstein-Gottorp
- Peter III of Russia (5 January 1762 to 9 July 1762), son of Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia, heiress of the original House of Romanov
- Paul I of Russia (17 November 1796 to 11 March 1801), son of Peter III of Russia and Catherine the Great
Emperors of Russia, Grand Dukes of Finland, Kings of Poland
- Alexander I of Russia (24 March 1801 to 1 December 1825), son of Paul I of Russia
- Constantine I of Russia (1 December 1825 to 26 December 1825), son of Paul I of Russia (disputed as he never actually acceded to the throne)
- Nicholas I of Russia (26 December 1825 to 2 March 1855), brother of Constantine I of Russia, son of Paul I of Russia
- Alexander II of Russia (2 March 1855 to 13 March 1881), son of Nicholas I of Russia
- Alexander III of Russia (13 March 1881 to 1 November 1894), son of Alexander II of Russia
- Nicholas II of Russia (1 November 1894 to 15 March 1917), son of Alexander III of Russia
- Michael II of Russia (15 March 1917 to 16 March 1917), brother of Nicholas II of Russia, son of Alexander III of Russia
- This is disputed; Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia was de jure Emperor of Russia after his brother Nicholas II abdicated in 1917 and proclaimed his brother "Emperor Michael II", but Michael declined to take power a day later. Nevertheless, he was arrested and murdered by Bolsheviks on 13 June 1918.
