Count (later Prince) Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky (Russian: Андрей Кириллович Разумовский, Rasumovsky; Ukrainian: Андрі́й Кири́лович Розумо́вський, Andriy Kyrylovych Rozumovskyi; 2 November 1752 – 23 September 1836) was a Russian diplomat who spent many years of his life in Vienna.[1]
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Razumovsky was the son of Cyril Razumovsky, the last hetman of Ukraine, and nephew of Aleksey Grigorievich Razumovsky, called the Night Emperor. The elder Rasumovsky's late Baroque palace on the Nevsky Prospekt is a minor landmark in Saint Petersburg. In 1792 Andres Kyrillovitch was appointed the Tsar's diplomatic representative to the Habsburg court in Vienna, one of the crucial diplomatic posts during the Napoleonic era. He was a chief negotiator during the Congress of Vienna that resettled Europe in 1814, and asserted Russian rights in Poland.
In 1808 he established a house string quartet consisting of Ignaz Schuppanzigh, Franz Weiss, Joseph Linke and Sina. Razumovsky was known as a competent torban (Ukrainian theorbo) player. Of four torbans known to have been in his possession one is preserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
His commissioning three string quartets from Beethoven in 1806 was the act that has made his name familiar. He asked Beethoven to include a "Russian" theme in each quartet: Beethoven included Ukrainian themes in the first two. Razumovsky was the brother-in-law of another of Beethoven's patrons, Prince Joseph Lobkowitz. His first wife, Countess Elisabeth von Thun was a sister in law of Count Carl von Lichnowsky.
The Palais Rasumofsky in Vienna
(contemporary etching by Eduard Gurk)
He built a magnificent Neoclassic palace worthy of the representative of Alexander I, at his own expense and to the designs of Louis Montoyer, on the Landstraße, quite close to the city, and filled it with antiquities and modern works of art. In the morning of 31 December 1814, during the preparation of a ball with the Tsar Alexander I as guest of honor, a fire broke out in a temporary ballroom extension, setting the ballroom ablaze and burning out roomfuls of art in the back wing of the palace. Rasumovsky, though he was raised to Prince the following year, was never the same. He lived in seclusion in Vienna until his death in 1836.
The evolution of the three Partitions of Poland during the end of the 18th century, leading to some 125 years of polish political eclipse of the formerly secular powerful Lithuanian-Polish Kingdom till 1918 can be seen in the well informed page: