Curated playlist
Russian people of German descent
- Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky once listened to a playback of his own voice on an Edison recording device and said: "This trill could be better." That was January 1890, in Moscow, and the remark captures something essential about the man: even…
- Fabian Gottlieb von BellingshausenFabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen stood on the deck of the sloop Vostok on the 27th of January 1820, and looked out at something no human being had ever confirmed seeing before: the landmass of Antarctica. He had crossed the Antarctic…
- Peter II of RussiaPeter II of Russia was an emperor who died on the morning of his own wedding day. He was fourteen years old. The date was the 30th of January 1730, and the bride, Ekaterina Dolgorukova, was already waiting. Instead, the boy who had briefly…
- Alexander BlokAlexander Alexandrovich Blok heard something in the summer of 1917 that most people could not. Writing in his diary, he recorded: "I feel that a great event was coming, but what it was exactly was not revealed to me." That sentence…
- Catherine the GreatCatherine the Great was born Princess Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, on the 2nd of May 1729, in the Ducal Castle of Stettin in Prussian Pomerania. Her family had little money. Her rise was bankrolled by her mother…
- Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov arrived in the United States in May 1940 aboard the SS Champlain, a Russian exile who spoke three languages and had already written nine novels that almost nobody in America had read. He was forty years old, nearly broke,…
- Helena BlavatskyHelena Blavatsky preferred to be known by three letters: HPB. The sobriquet came from her friend Henry Steel Olcott, and it stuck to a woman who spoke Russian, Georgian, English, French, Italian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. She wore loose robes…
- Nicholas RoerichNicholas Roerich left behind more than 7,000 paintings, a spiritual movement that still has followers today, and an international treaty signed at the White House in April 1935. Born on the 9th of October 1874 in Saint Petersburg, he died…
- Wassily KandinskyWassily Kandinsky stood in his studio one day and stared at a painting on the wall for a long moment before realising it was his own work, hanging upside down. That disorienting pause, according to some art historians, cracked something…
- Alexander ScriabinAlexander Scriabin died on the 14th of April 1915 from a pimple. That sentence sounds absurd, but it is true. A small sore on his upper lip, first noticed as early as 1914 while he was in London, returned after his last triumphant concert…
- Alfred SchnittkeAlfred Garrievich Schnittke was born on the 24th of November 1934 in Engels, a city in the Volga German ASSR of the Russian SFSR, to parents who straddled two worlds. His father was Jewish, born in Frankfurt, and had moved to the Soviet…
- Richard SorgeRichard Sorge arrived in Yokohama on the 6th of September 1933, carrying press credentials from the most prestigious newspaper in Germany and a Nazi Party membership card fresh from Berlin. Joseph Goebbels had attended his farewell dinner.…
- Afanasy FetAfanasy Fet died on the 21st of November 1892 with a paper knife in his hand and a suicide note on the table. His secretary had just wrestled the blade away from him, cutting her own hand in the struggle. Moments later, chased through the…