Authors

Discussion

The family correspondence (kept at the Russian National Library in St Petersburg) between Jacob von Staehlin (1709-1785), a well-known Russian historian of art, academician and courtier, and his son Peter von Staehlin (1744-1800), Russian diplomat, is an example of space dedicated to the discussion of political news and networks. Diplomatic news is exchanged by both sides and not only Peter von Staehlin. Jacob von Staehlin maintained close contacts with various diplomats (both foreign and Russian, including Count Johann Ostermann and Count Nikita Panin, who headed the Russian foreign policy), thus building a network of useful channels of information and influential agents. Another characteristic of this letters’ exchange is self-fashioning through correspondence. The language choice of the authors is relevant to these two questions. This correspondence is entirely in French while the Staehlins were of German origin and had a good command of some other languages, including Russian. We will try to understand the exact functions of this language choice: was it determined by the role of French as the main European diplomatic language, the language of the court, or was it more a tool of self-fashioning and network-building?