Dmitry Girs

Who was Dmitry Girs?

Dmitry Konstantinovich Girs was a Russian writer.

Dmitry Girs was born in Taganrog, where his father was chief of quarantine. Girs’s ancestors were of Swedish origin. His most notable relative was his cousin Nikolai Karlovich Girs, foreign minister in 1882-1894. In 1843, his family moved to Saint Petersburg, where he studied in a military school, graduated from the engineer college, and then served as a field engineer. In 1868 he had to leave the city as punishment for his speech at the funeral ceremony of Dmitri Pisarev.

Girs’s first writings were published in 1862 in The Russian Messenger under the pen-name Konstantinov. In 1868 he published the beginning of his novel Staraia i novaia Rossia in Otechestvennye zapiski. Although the novel aroused great expectations, it was never finished. Other works by Girs are Na krayu propasti in Delo, 1870; Kaliforniiskiy rudnik in Otechestvennye zapiski, 1872; Dnevnik notarialnogo pistsa, Ibid., 1883; Avdotya-dvumuzhnitsa in Russkaya mysl', 1884.