Andrey Razumovsky

Count Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky

Count (later Prince) Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky (Russian: Андре́й Кири́ллович Разумо́вский, 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. His name is transliterated differently in different English sources, including spellings Razumovsky, Rasoumoffsky, and Rasoumoffsky, the last of which being used by the British Government for its official translation from the French of the Paris peace treaty of 1815 and the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna.

Life

Razumovsky was the son of Kirill Razumovsky, the last Hetman of Zaporizhian Host and of Catherine Naryshkina, a cousin of Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia. (He was also a nephew of the Tsarina's lover, 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 Andrey 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 re-organised Europe in 1814, and asserted Russian rights in Poland.

In 1808 he established a house string quartet consisting of Ignaz Schuppanzigh, Louis Sina, Franz Weiss, and Joseph Linke. Razumovsky was an accomplished amateur violinist, and also known as a competent torban (Ukrainian theorbo) player. The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna holds one of the four torbans known to have been in his possession. 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.^[1] Razumovsky was the brother-in-law of another of Beethoven's patrons, Prince Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz. His first wife, Countess Elisabeth von Thun was a sister in law of Count Carl von Lichnowsky.

The Palais Rasumofsky

Razumovsky 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 Vienna, 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.^[2] Even though he was raised to prince the following year, Razumovsky was never the same. He lived in seclusion in Vienna until his death in 1836. In 1862 the street on which Razumovsky's palace is located was named Rasumofskygasse.^[3]

Conversion to Roman Catholicism

Razumovsky converted to Roman Catholicism^[4] from his native religion, Russian Orthodoxy, under the influence of his second wife, the Countess Tyurgeym, whom he married in February 1816.