Balthasar von Campenhausen

Who was Balthasar von Campenhausen?

Balthasar Balthasarovich Campenhausen was a Russian statesman who held the ranks of Privy Councilor and Chamberlain.

Baron Balthasar von Campenhausen was born in 1772 into a Baltic German noble family Campenhausen residing in the province of Livonia. The ancestors of Balthasar Campenhausen served Swedish and Russian sovereigns. He studied in the universities of Leipzig, Wittenberg and Göttingen that he graduated with a thesis Entwürfe zu physikalischen Völker-, Religions— und Kulturkarten des russischen Reiches at the Royal Scientific Society. Balthasar Campenhausen served as ambassador to Poland and Sweden, headed reorganization of the commercial school and medical surgery institution in Saint Petersburg and during the rule of Alexander I of Russia, he was appointed director of the 3rd Department at the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1802, Russian Emperor Alexander I of Russia sent Campenhausen to the South Russian seaports on Black and Azov Sea to see the reasons for poor trade development and to provide quarantine conditions in the South of Russia during the outbreak of bubonic plague in Turkey and Persia.