Our Notes & References

First edition of this account of the Russian capital (and Russia at large), complete with its attractive folding plan of St. Petersburg with a small inset view of the city, and its two decorated lithographed title pages.

This travel account is surprising by its diversity and wide range of topics, from “the Russian merchants’s way of speculation” (our translation here and below) and house prices to the ice rinks on the Neva, “choosing a bride”, and “the Petersburgization of the provinces”.

Other subchapters discuss the street lighting, the washerwomen, “Gentiles, Jews, Christians and Mohammedians”, Circassians, “Russian intoxication”, hospitals, “the insane asylum” (with subchapters on “the two crazy priests, the imperial bride, the young cadet, the Finish, Russian and German lunatics”), ice sleds, Chinese goods on the Russian market, notable art collections, tea trade, gemstone cutting, customs duties, the great lent with its appropriate foods, Germans in Russia (with useful statistics), different kinds of servants and their duties, gardens and dachas, and curious miscellaneous “statistical notes: coal, salt, suicides, foreigners, guards, […] movement of the population, […] pickpockets, lending libraries, [and] steam baths”. Some subchapters’ titles remain untranslated, such as “Kwas! Kwas!” and “Nastoiken und Naliften” from the generous description of the local cuisine, or “Dawai iswoschtschik!” from the chapter on cart drivers.

The prominent traveller, writer and geographer Johann Georg Kohl (1808-78) went to Courland (now western Latvia) as a tutor and travelled from there to St. Petersburg, among other places. Upon his return to Dresden, “he published his travel observations made in Russia in the extensive writings: Petersburg in Bildern und Skizzen (1841), Reisen in Südrußland (1841) and Reisen im Inneren von Rußland und Polen (1841). These descriptions of Russia, especially of St. Petersburg and southern Russia, were so well received that they prompted Kohl to devote himself entirely to the profession of a travel writer” (our translation, ADB).

A pleasant example in its first binding.

Bibliography

Cat. Russica K 817; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 16, pp. 425-28.