Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] On December 30, the State Hermitage Museum in St. George's Hall presented to journalists a priceless gift received from a private collector. It was the decree of Emperor Peter I "On the observance of laws in the state at all levels of government, by all subjects under pain of death." The document in German was printed in Riga on August 20, 1722, after the annexation of the Baltic lands to Russia.
| Riga was one of the Hanseatic League port cities. My father, who was born there in 1919, spoke German, Latvian, and Russian as his mother tongues. The German was quaintly old-fashioned, according to my mother, but it later helped when he was getting a PhD in chemistry. |
The document was donated to the museum by collector Anatoly Zhukov in honor of the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great, which was widely celebrated in 2022. Director of the Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky noted that this is not the first gift from a collector that becomes an exhibit of the museum.
According to the St. Petersburg TV channel, other gifts that the Hermitage received in the outgoing year were also presented today. Among them is a book by Academician Boris Piotrovsky, who also headed the Hermitage, written during the Siege of Leningrad and published in 1944. It is dedicated to the ancient kingdom of Urartu. Also, the museum's funds were replenished with a jug found during excavations in Urartu and arrowheads.
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