House of Golitsyn


The House of Golitsyn is the second largest and noblest Princely house in Russia. Among its members were voivodes, landlords, knyazes, knights, diplomats, Prime Ministers, admirals, stewards, State Counsellors, and other statesmen.
The Golitsyns claim their seniority in the Lithuanian dynasty of Gediminas which has existed since the 13th century. Descendants of this family in Europe and the west write their name in the form Galitzine. The family is among the first Russian aristocratic dynasties and its members bear the honorific predicate His Serene Highness.
The family produced many well-known statesmen and figures of the Russian Empire, among them notably Vasily, Boris, Dmitry and Nikolai Golitsyn, the last chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Empire.
Numerous pieces of art or geographic locations were named after the family, such as the Galitzin Triptych created by Pietro Perugino in 1485 or the Galitzine Quartet No. 12 commissioned by Nikolai Galitzin and delivered by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1825, the Golitsyn craters A and B on the far side of the Moon, the Gallitzinberg, in Vienna, the Gallitzin borough in Pennsylvania, the Gallitzin Tunnel and Gallitzin State Forest, the Golitsyn Hospital in Moscow and various places, localities and municipalities in Russia.

Origins

According to legend, the family descends from Lithuanian prince Jurgis, son of Patrikas and grandson of Narimantas and thus a great-grandson of Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania. After the extinction of the Korecki family in the 17th century, the Golitsyns claimed dynastic seniority in the House of Gediminas.
Prince George immigrated to the court of Vasily I of Moscow and married Vasily's sister. His children and grandchildren, among them, were considered premier Russian boyars. One of them, Prince , grandson of Yuriy, earned the nickname Golitsa after the gauntlet he wore
on his left hand. His son Yuri Mikhailovich Bulgakov continued with the family line Golytsin and his great-grandson Prince Vasily Golitsyn was a claimant to the Russian throne during the Time of Troubles and went as an ambassador to Poland to offer the Russian crown to Prince Władysław; he died in prison.
Peter I of Russia permitted the Golitsyns to incorporate the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into their coat of arms; “Vir est Vis”, or "man himself is power”, is the Golitsyn family motto.

Notable Golitsyns

Prince Andrey Andreyevich Golitsyn, governor of Siberia, was the ancestor of all existing princes Golitsyns. He had four sons, from whom four branches of the Golitsyn family descended:
  • Vasily – branch Vasilyevich
  • Ivan – branch Ivanovich, which ended in 1751 in a monastery
  • Alexey – branch Alexeevich
  • Michael – branch Mikhailovich
By the 18th century, the family was divided into four major branches. One branch died out while the other three and their subdivisions contained about 1,100 members.

Branch Vasilyevich

The Bolsheviks arrested dozens of Golitsyns only to be killed, driven into the exile, or die in the Gulag; dozens disappeared during the Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war, and their fate remained unknown.
File:V.M. Golytsin by Serov .jpg|thumb|Vladimir Mikhailovich Golitsyn resigned in 1905 as mayor of Moscow; painting by Valentin Serov
  • Mikhail Vladimirovich Golitsyn was the son of Vladimir Mikhailovich Golitsyn and grandson of Mikhail Fedorovich Golitsyn ; Nikolai V. Golitsyn was his brother
  • * Vladimir Mikhailovich Golitsyn started his career as a sailor. During the 1920s Vladimir began a very successful career as a book illustrator and well-known artist, illustrating around forty books between 1925 and 1941. He also worked for the magazines the Universal Pathfinder, Pioneer and several others. Despite his very popular artwork, he was barely tolerated by the Stalinist bureaucracy and as general conditions worsened, found it increasingly hard to support his parents and young family. Vladimir died from exhaustion and under-nourishment in the Sviyazhska prison camp near Kazan.
  • ** Alexander Vladimirovich Golitsyn. His son was Prince Alexander Golitzen a Moscow-born production designer and oversaw art direction on more than 300 movies; he died in San Diego, California.
  • * Sergei Mikhailovich Golitsyn published his Memoirs of a Survivor: The Golitsyn Family in Stalin's Russia, covering the period from the revolution in 1917 to the entry of the Soviet Union into World War II in 1941.
  • ** Georgy Sergeyevich Golitsyn was a Russian physicist noted for his research on the concept of nuclear winter.
  • Mstislav Galitzine, count Osterman joined Alexander Kolchak after the October Revolution. In 1925 he married the California mystic, author and heiress Aimee Crocker. She was 61 and it was her fifth marriage. She offered him $250 a month if he would marry her in exchange for the right to call herself a princess. Two years later they divorced. He was forced to pay all the court costs of the suit. His brother was
  • Leo Alexandrovich Galitzine, count Osterman escaped from Soviet Russia and came to settle in Canada by 1929 in Edson, Alberta. He and his wife, Marguerite Therese Reynaud-Carcasse, purchased 420 acres of land, mostly bordering the McLeod River. The Galitzines started an airplane charter company at Great Bear Lake. After his wife died, Leo moved to Hollywood where he was acting in various films as an extra, including in The Razor's Edge and The Chocolate Soldier.
  • Princess Irene Galitzine, fashion designer, was the daughter of Boris Lvovich Galizin
  • Prince George Vladimirovich Galitzine served with distinction in the rank of Major, Welsh Guards 1939–45. He was subsequently a diplomat and businessman. Following retirement he was active as a researcher, author and lecturer on Russia. In his memory was founded in 1994 by his widow, Princess George Galitzine, and his daughter Princess Catherine Galitzine. The Library specialises in the cultural life of St Petersburg with a collection in excess of 3000 books, photographs and documents for research tracing back to Catherine the Great. The Library occupies the palace on the Fontanka Embankment, formerly the family home of his mother Countess Catherine von Carlow, daughter of Duke Georg Alexander of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a younger son of Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna of Russia. Through the Mecklenburg-Strelitz connection, this branch of the Galitzine family are related to many of the Royal Houses of Europe.
  • George Golitzin was a Hollywood producer and deacon in the Orthodox Church in America.
  • Yuri Golitsyn, was born in Yokohama, and was one of the founders of public relations having written the handbook on the subject and pushed research on the family forward to being published in a book. He was also a member of The Right Society and yet championed action against concentration camps after being the first allied officer to witness one firsthand
  • Anatoliy Golitsyn Mikhaylovich was a Soviet defector to the United States
  • , Russian-Serbian-American banker with Bank of New York who led the re-introduction of banks in the former Warsaw Pact countries including the newly formed states from the former Soviet Union.
  • Archbishop Alexander Golitzin is Archbishop for Dallas, the South and the Bulgarian Diocese for the Orthodox Church in America. He is also emeritus professor of theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His academic work focuses on the discerning the roots of eastern Christian spirituality in Second Temple Judaism.
  • Piotr Dmitriyevich Galitzine was the son of Dmitry Vladimirovich Golitsyn. He married Maria-Anna von Habsburg, better known as Maria-Anna Galitzine, a Catholic activist
  • * Tatiana Galitzine is an American architect.
  • * Maria Galitzine was a Russian-American interior designer.
  • Grigori Galitsin was a former erotic photographer.
  • Alexander Golitsyn is an entrepreneur who founded a children's furniture factory