General Henning’s Yekaterinburg: An Attempt at Reading the “Urban Text”

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2021.3.626

Keywords:

Georg Wilhelm (Vilim Ivanovich) Henning, Peter I, Yekaterinburg, St Petersburg, Baroque, cameralism, architectural and spatial organization

Abstract

The author of this article attempts a semiotic interpretation of the features of the architectural and planning system of early Yekaterinburg (1723–1734). The method is based on an improvisation on Michel de Certeau’s ideas about the city as a complex text, which results from the simultaneous and inconsistent creativity of its founders and administrators on the one hand and ordinary people on the other. Another source for the author’s improvisation is the ideas of some representatives of the French school of genetic criticism, more particularly, the concepts of avant-text and text. From these positions, the author considers the activity of V. I. Henning (Rus. transcription: Gennin), the founder and first head of Yekaterinburg and a general in Russian service. The main milestones of his career, the accumulation of experience as an engineer and administrator, and the formation of a worldview before his Ural period are evaluated as work on the avant-text, while Yekaterinburg becomes the actual text. The author proves that Yekaterinburg was created by Henning not just as a large mining and metallurgical enterprise. General Henning’s Yekaterinburg appears as a manifesto city, a material text that embodies the aesthetics of the Baroque and the postulates of cameralism in its layout and execution. The city became a symbol of Petrine empire building on the border with Russia’s Asian possessions.

Author Biography

Dmitry Redin

Dr. Hab. (History), Professor, Deputy Chief Editor of Quaestio Rossica Journal, Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin.

19, Mira Str., 620002, Yekaterinburg, Russia.

ORCID 0000-0002-3431-1662

landrat14@mail.ru

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Published

2021-09-29

How to Cite

Redin, D. (2021). General Henning’s Yekaterinburg: An Attempt at Reading the “Urban Text”. Quaestio Rossica, 9(3), 1042–1063. https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2021.3.626

Issue

Section

Disputatio