At least three copies of the memoir are known to exist today. One is a clean copy in Rosenstrauch’s own hand. This is the manuscript that is reproduced, with all its idiosyncrasies of spelling and punctuation, in the present publication. It is in the possession of the Division of Written Sources of the State Historical Museum in Moscow (fond 402, delo 239). The second was made, judging by the paper and the handwriting, by a Russian scribe in the late 19th century. It is held by the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow (fond 1337, opis’ 2, edinitsa khraneniia 49), and may be the version used by Korelin in the 1890s. The third copy, a typescript, belongs to Ms. Elke Briuer of Vicksburg, Mississippi: it comes from Ms. Briuers grandmother, a descendant of Wilhelm Rosenstrauch, who fled from her native Russia to Germany in the last days before the outbreak of World War I.

Rosenstrauch’s memoir of 1812 is a significant document for the history of civilians in the Napoleonic Wars. The life story of Rosenstrauch and his son Wilhelm exemplifies the often friendly and cooperative bond between Germany and Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. The manner in which the memoir found its way to Mississippi is illustrative of that relationship’s breakdown in the 20th century. Perhaps it is grounds for optimism for the future that the memoir is now at last being published in a shared effort by a major Russian publisher and the German Historical Institute of Moscow.

The illustrations in the present book depict the following:

1. Map of the areas in Germany and the Netherlands where Rosenstrauch is known to have lived or traveled in 1768–1804.

2. Portrait of Rosenstrauch (1834) by Johann Baptist Ferdinand Matthias Lampi (1807–1855), from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

3. Lithograph, based on Lampi’s portrait of Rosenstrauch, that was sold after his death to raise funds for his church in Khar’kov.

4. Title page of Rosenstrauch’s memoir of 1812, from the State Historical Museum in Moscow.

5. A petition for financial assistance following the devastation of Moscow in 1812, signed by Rosenstrauch, from the Central Historical Archive of Moscow.

6. Portrait of General Comte de Flahaut (a French officer mentioned in Rosenstrauch’s memoir of 1812), by Francois-Pascal-Simon G'erard, c. 1813, from the Bowood Collection, Bowood Estate, Calne, Wiltshire (England).

7. Napoleonic soldiers and Russian civilians in occupied Moscow, after a drawing by Christian Wilhelm Faber du Faur, from the Bavarian Army Museum, Ingolstadt (Photo: Christian Stoye). UID-Nr.: DE 811 33 55 17.

8. Portrait of Wilhelm Rosenstrauch, from the collection of Grafika.ru.

Alexander M. Martin, “‘It Was the Lord’s Will That I Should Not Leave Moscow’: J. A. Rosenstrauch’s Memoir of the 1812 War,” Comparativ: Zeitschrift f"ur Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 22, no. 4 (2012): 31–45

Alexander M. Martin, “Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch (1768–1835),” in Stephen M. Norris and Willard Sunderland, eds., Russia’s People of Empire: Life Stories from Eurasia, 1500-Present (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), pp. 105–116.

Alexander M. Martin, “Middle-Class Masculinity in an Immigrant Diaspora: War, Revolution, and Russia’s Ethnic Germans,” in Karen Hagemann et al., eds., Gender, War, and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1775–1830 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 147–166.

Most eyewitness accounts of Moscow during the occupation of 1812 appeared in print before the end of the 19th century. An exception is the memoir of Johannes Ambrosius Rosenstrauch, which is here published for the first time, along with a biography of the author. In the course of a colorful life that took him from his native Prussia to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and finally Odessa and Khar’kov, Rosenstrauch (1768–1835) was an actor, merchant, freemason, and pastor. In 1812 he was a merchant of fashion goods in Moscow and was forced to share his house with a motley group of homeless foreigners, Russian serfs, and French officers. His memoir describes both his own spiritual evolution during the war and the drama (and sometimes humor) of what he observed: the fire, the looting, the class conflicts among Russians, the hostility and occasional cooperation between the Russians and the French, and the general cruelty as well as absurdity of war.

This publication inaugurates a new series, Archivalia Rossica, a joint editorial project of NLO and the German Historical Institute in Moscow. The series will publish bilingual or translated editions, with detailed scholarly commentary, of foreign-language sources from archives in Russia and abroad about Russian history from the 18th to the early 20th century.

Илл. 1. Карта странствий И. – А. Розенштрауха в Германии и Голландии.

Илл. 2. Иоганн-Батист Фердинанд Матиас Лампи. «Портрет пастора» (портрет Иоганна-Амвросия Розенштрауха). Масло, 1834 г.

Государственный Эрмитаж.

Илл. 3. «Иоганн-Амвросий Розенштраух, бывший советник консистории и пастор евангелическо-лютеранской общины Харькова.