Zur Genese der Mission Nikolaj Petrovič Rumjancevs in Frankfurt am Main. Ein Beitrag zur russischen Deutschlandpolitik in den 1780er Jahren

In the early 1780s, the St. Petersburg court decided to establish a new Russian diplomatic post in Frankfurt am Main; the mission in the German Reich was entrusted to a young diplomat, Nikolai P. Rumyantsev. Attempts to clarify the purpose of establishing a new legation have been made since mid-nineteenth century. Prussian historians wanted to see it as an instrument of support for the Berlin court, Austrian authors, on the other hand, the Viennese Burg. According to Russian historiography, on the other hand, the establishment of a diplomatic post in Frankfurt was to manifest the achievement of a significant position in the Reich by the St. Petersburg court. These judgements were pronounced without considering the primary source: the instructions received by the minister. The article is based precisely on that Russian diplomatic correspondence stored at the Foreign Policy Archive of Imperial Russia in Moscow. An analysis of the instructions sent to Rumyantsev proves that Russian plans for expansion in the Holy Roman Empire, to gain supremacy over the “Third Germany” i.e. the lesser and middle states of the Reich, were but political wishful thinking. The Russian domination in the empire, especially over the lesser states of the Reich, was completely unattainable for the empress. The expansion model tried in Courland, Poland and Sweden did not work in Germany.