Plato von Ustinov

Baron Plato Grigorievich Ustinov (Russian: Платон Григорьевич Устинов) (1840–1918)^[1] was the owner of the Hôtel du Parc (Park Hotel) in Jaffa, Ottoman Empire (now Israel).

Ustinov was a Russian born aristocrat, holding a manor estate in Ustinovska near Moscow, who had travelled the Levant for its climate, as recommended by his doctors, to heal his lung disease. On his way he learned to know Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907) and his wife Dorothea, née Bauer (1831–1870), who both worked as Protestant missionaries in Jaffa for the St. Chrischona Pilgrim Mission and earned their livelihood by several enterprises, such as a steam mill, a pilgrims' hostel and trading with European imported merchandise. From mid-1861 till early 1862 Ustinov stayed in their hostel and they won him as financial partner for their enterprises. Once completely cured, he returned to Ustinovska, but left the Metzlers a considerable sum of money, in order to enable them to fulfill their dream of establishing a missionary school and an infirmary in Jaffa.^[2]

In May the Metzlers reported St. Chrischona Pilgrim Mission near Basel, that they had opened an infirmary, and St. Chrischona – very pleased about this progress – announced the emission of two deaconesses from Riehen deaconesses mother house for the infirmary.^[3] When Ustinov returned to Jaffa in September 1865 he was very content with how the Metzlers had invested his money.^[4] In 1865 and 1866 Metzler came into difficulties because he – against the then valid Ottoman rules – gave asylum to a runaway slave woman. Further trouble aroused when Samuel Gobat, Protestant Bishop of Jerusalem, subjected the Jaffa mission to Johannes Gruhler (1833–1905), the ordained pastor of Ramle, although Metzler had built up the Jaffa mission and used to be fulfill pastoral functions too.^[5] Finally in 1868 his local competitor millers sued him for having illegally imported the steam machine.

Metzler treated many sick colonists around George Adams and Abraham McKenzie, who had arrived – coming from Maine – on 22 September 1866 in Jaffa. They founded the American Colony, named Amelican in Arabic, or Adams City in English, between today's Rechov Eilat and Rechov haRabbi mi-Bacherach in Tel Aviv-Yafo, but many contracted Cholera, and about a third of them died. They erected their wooden houses from prefabricated pieces, which they had brought with them. However, the sickness, the climate, the insecure and arbitrary treatment by the Ottoman authorities, made many willing to remigrate to Maine.

But Adams withheld their money, which they had earlier conveyed to him. So Metzler bought the land of five colonists, providing them the funds to leave.^[6] One of the houses Metzler resold later to the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews. Most settlers returned to America until 1867.

In early 1869 Ustinov, meanwhile returned to Ustinovska, asked the Metzlers, whom he esteemed as good managers, to join him there, since he needed their help. Metzler then sold much of his real estate on 5 March 1869 to Templers, a religious group seeking a new home in the Holy Land. The Templers also continued the infirmary, according to the charitable principles of the Metzlers and Ustinov. Dorothea Metzler died in Ustinovska after a difficult birth, on her deathbed Ustinov promised her to marry her daughter Marie.

In 1875 Ustinov decided to convert to Protestantism. He was baptised Russian Orthodox, and being a Russian aristocrat holding land as a fief of his liege lord, the tzar, his conversion would have meant the loss of his fief and title, since all the tzar's aristocratic vassals had to be Russian Orthodox by faith. Ustinov managed to sell his estates to another Russian Orthodox aristocrat in 1876, before his conversion became known.

The Russian Orthodox-baptised Württembergian Queen consort Olga Nikolaevna of Russia arranged, that Ustinov was naturalised in the Kingdom of Württemberg, thus becoming German, and that his title was confirmed as a Württembergian rank, thus becoming Freiherr von Ustinow.^[7]

After his marriage with Marie Metzler in Württembergian Korntal on 4 October 1876 and two years of living there, they decided to move back to Jaffa and bought a mansion in the former American, meanwhile so-called German Colony of the Templers. The mansion that became the hotel was built originally for George Adams. It was later acquired by the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (a Jewish Christian missionary society now known as the Church's Ministry Among Jewish People or CMJ). However, the marriage was very unhappy and the couple were divorced in 1888, accompanied by costly divorce proceedings between 1881 and 1889.^[8]

However, in June 1874 the denomination of the Temple Society underwent a schism. Temple leader Georg David Hardegg (1812–1879) and about a third of the Templers seceded from the Temple Society, after personal and substantial quarrels with the other leader Christoph Hoffmann.^[9] So in 1885 the Protestant Pastor Carl Schlicht (1855–1930) started to proselytise among the schismatics and succeeded.^[10] In 1889 former Templers, Protestant German and Swiss expatriates, and proselytes gained earlier by the Metzlers' missionary efforts constituted the Evangelical congregation of Jaffa. Johann Georg Kappus sen. (1826–1905) became the first chairman of the congregation, seconded and later followed by his son Johann Georg Kappus jun. (1855–1928).^[11] Ustinov joined that congregation.^[12] Ustinov offered the new congregation the hall of his Hôtel du Parc in Jaffa for services (1889–1897).^[13]

On 12 January 1889 Ustinov married Magdalena Hall (1868–1945), who had been born on 13 April 1868 in Magdala, the day when British forces took that fortress by storm (Battle of Magdala), thus liberating her family (and others) by then held in Ethiopian captivity and afterwards moving to Jaffa.^[14] Her mother was the Ethiopian court-lady Katharina Hall (1850–1932), also known as Welette-Iyesus, who – on 17 May 1863 – had married in Gaffet (near Debre Tabor) her father-to-be Moritz Hall (1838–1914), a Jew from Cracow, cannon-caster of Negus Tewodros II of Ethiopia and convert to Protestantism by missionaries of St. Chrischona Pilgrim Mission, while staying in Magdala.^[15] Katharina Hall was of mixed Ethiopian-German origin, as the daughter of the German painter and immigrant to Ethiopia Eduard Zander (1813–1868; also illustrator for explorer Wilhelm Schimper) and the court lady Isette-Werq in Gondar, daughter of an Ethiopian general called Meqado (active before the mid-19th century).^[16] "Moritz Hall and his family came under the protection of the German Consulate in Jaffa, which he served as an Honorary Dragoman and interpreter."^[17] Ustinov and Magdalena Hall had four children.^[18] Among them were their eldest son Jona von Ustinov, who was the father of British-Russian actor Peter Ustinov, Tabitha von Ustinow, and Peter (Petja) von Ustinow (1895–1917; killed in action in Hollebeeke).^[19]

When Jaffa's first own pastor, Albert Eugen Schlaich from Korntal, a studied theologist and paedagogue for primary schools, and his wife Luise Wilhelmine Julie Schlaich arrived on 10 March 1897 in Jaffa, Ustinov housed them in his hotel until they would find an apartment of their own.^[20]

In his "Hôtel du Parc" Ustinov housed German Emperor William II, his wife Auguste Victoria, and their closest entourage on their stay in Jaffa on 27 October 1898. Their travel agency Thomas Cook accommodated the imperial guests with Ustinov because his "Hôtel du Parc" was considered the only establishment in Jaffa suited for them.^[21]

On 18 July 1898 Peter Martin Metzler, who then lived in Stuttgart, conveyed his last piece of real estate in Jaffa for the construction of a church to the Evangelical congregation, while his friend and divorced son-in-law Ustinov rewarded Metzler with 10,000 francs, two thirds of the site's estimated price.^[22]

When the Evangelical Immanuel Church of Jaffa was finally built and furnished Ustinov granted it a great crucifix from olive tree wood.^[23]

Ethiopian "Empress Taytu had convinced her adviser, Katarina Hall, [who had returned without her husband to Ethiopia in 1902,] to persuade her son-in-law, Baron von Ustinov, to acquire property in Jerusalem near the Ethiopian Church. The land was purchased in 1910, and construction of a large building began. Baron von Ustinov and his family left Palestine for Russia in 1913, where Baron von Ustinov died in 1917. His widow Magdalena, who went to live in England and later in Canada, inherited the land in Jerusalem and the partially completed building on it. During a trip to Jerusalem in 1924, she sold the property to the Empress Zauditu while the Empress was also visiting there. The Empress continued the construction on Ustinov’s foundations. The building became the Ethiopian Consulate and is still in existence."^[24]

After the end of the British public custodianship of enemy property in Palestine in 1925 the Magdalena von Ustinow sold the former mansion in Rechov Auerbach No. 8 (רחוב אוארבך; then named Seestraße, lit. Sea street) to the CMJ in 1926 and it is currently used as a place of worship, guest house, and heritage centre, called Beit Immanuel (Immanuel House).^[25]

Plato von Ustinov was also a major collector of Palestinian antiquities. His collection ended up in Norway, at the University of Oslo.

Bibliography

• Eisler, Ejal Jakob (Eyal Ya'aqov Aizler/איל יעקב איזלר), Der deutsche Beitrag zum Aufstieg Jaffas 1850–1914: Zur Geschichte Palästinas im 19. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997, (Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins; vol. 22) ISBN 3-447-03928-0
• Eisler, Ejal Jakob (איל יעקב איזלר), Peter Martin Metzler (1824–1907): Ein christlicher Missionar im Heiligen Land [פטר מרטין מצלר (1907–1824): סיפורו של מיסיונר נוצרי בארץ-ישראל; German], Haifa: אוניברסיטת חיפה / המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ-ישראל במאה ה-19, 1999,(פרסומי המכון ע"ש גוטליב שומכר לחקר פעילות העולם הנוצרי בארץ-ישראל במאה ה-19/Abhandlungen des Gottlieb-Schumacher-Instituts zur Erforschung des christlichen Beitrags zum Wiederaufbau Palästinas im 19. Jahrhundert; vol. 2), ISBN 965-7109-03-5
• Perry, Yaron (2003). British Mission to the Jews in Nineteenth-Century Palestine. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-8385-X
• Vogel, Lester I. (1993). To See a Promised Land. Penn State Press. ISBN 0-271-00884-9

Ustinow collection, further reading

• Pedersen, Johannes (1928), Inscriptiones Semiticae collectionis Ustinowianae, Oslo.^[26]
• Skupinska-Løvset, Ilona (1976), The Ustinov collection: the Palestinian pottery, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget
• Frellumstad, Randi (2007), Glass in the Ustinow collection: objects without context? University of Oslo

References

Persondata
Name	Ustinov, Plato
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1840
Place of birth
Date of death	1918
Place of death