Исторические происшествия в Москве 1812 года во время присутствия в сем городе неприятеля

St. Petersburg was Russia’s most cosmopolitan city and the largest port for the importation of European luxury goods, which enjoyed great popularity among the Russian upper class. Rosenstrauch traded in just such goods, first in St. Petersburg and then, starting November 1811, in Moscow, where he established his shop on Kuznetskii Most (“Blacksmiths’ Bridge”), the city’s most elegant shopping street. This was his position when Moscow was occupied by the army of Napoleon in 1812.

After the French withdrew from Moscow, Rosenstrauch rapidly succeeded in rebuilding his business. In the years that followed, he became not only a wealthy man but also a leading figure in Moscow’s German diaspora, particularly through his activity as chairman of several masonic lodges and as member of the vestry of the Lutheran Church of St. Michael. Also during this period, he became acquainted – details, unfortunately, are scarce – with leading figures at the Russian court, including Tsar Alexander I.

In 1820, evidently driven by a deepening religiosity, Rosenstrauch unexpectedly left Moscow. He went to Odessa, underwent a crash course in theology, and was ordained as a Lutheran minister in 1821. This surprising change of careers – he was already past fifty and had no university degree in divinity – was possible because the Russian government urgently needed Protestant pastors to help create order among the German settlers who were pouring into Russia’s Black Sea region. In 1821–22 he was adjunct pastor in Odessa; then, from 1822 until his death in 1835, he was pastor in Khar’kov (present-day Kharkiv in Ukraine). It is there, a few weeks or months before his death, that he wrote his memoir about Moscow in 1812. Its purpose and intended audience are unknown.

During his last years, and then in the decades after his death, Rosenstrauch gained renown as an author of Pietistic religious texts. He exchanged letters on religious themes with numerous Germans in Russia, some of which appeared in print, and he wrote a moving account of his pastoral efforts to reconcile dying sinners with Christ. The latter, originally serialized in 1833 in the Dorpat-based journal Evangelische Blätter, was published as a book in Dresden in 1845 (under the title Mittheilungen aus dem Nachlasse von Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch, früherem Consistorialrath und Prediger in Charkow) and appeared in the following decades in German, Russian, Dutch, and Danish editions. It drew the interest of leading Russian writers of the 1840s–70s, including P. A. Pletnev, N. V. Gogol, V. A. Zhukovskii, and N. S. Leskov.

Readers of the Russian edition of Rosenstrauch’s book seem to have had no knowledge either of his biography or of his connection with his son, the merchant Wilhelm Rosenstrauch in Moscow. This is surprising because Wilhelm (1792–1870), who carried on the family business after his father went to Odessa, was an important and well-known figure in Moscow society. He reached the rank of “hereditary honored citizen,” the highest social status accessible to a merchant in Russia. For many years he held leading institutional positions in the German diaspora, as consul-general of Prussia (1829–66), chairman of the vestry of the Lutheran Church of St. Michael (1834–69), and member of various charitable organizations. He was acquainted with important Russian literati, such as M. P. Pogodin and P. A. Viazemskii, and his shop was so famous that it appeared in works of Russian fiction, such as the novel On the Eve by Ivan Turgenev.

The Rosenstrauchs, both father and son, seem to have kept their family history deliberately secret. People who met Johannes Ambrosius reported that although he was a gifted raconteur and public speaker, he was tightlipped about his past. The same appears to have been true of Wilhelm. The reason, most likely, is that Johannes Ambrosius’s personal history – as a religious convert, a man separated from his wife, and especially as an actor – was of a nature to inspire distrust and moral disdain and thus might damage the family’s claim to respectability. Throughout his adult life, he was dogged by allegations that as a former actor, he could not be an honest person of upright character and sincere religiosity. Johannes Ambrosius wanted to be accepted as a pastor, and Wilhelm needed to inspire confidence as a businessman; neither had an interest in encouraging knowledge of the family’s dubious past.