ABSTRACT
I was born in Tiflis in 1849 and am now sixty-two. 1 My father, Julius Fedorovich Witte, a member of the nobility (the dvorianstvo) 2 of Pskov province, was born a Lutheran, in the Baltic provinces. His ancestors were Dutch who had settled in the Baltic provinces when they still belonged to Sweden. 3 After graduating from the University of Dorpat, 4 he studied agriculture and mining in Prussia. It was as an agricultural expert that he went to Saratov, where he fell in love with my mother, Catherine Andreevna Fadeeva. She was one of four children of the governor of Saratov province, Andrei Mikhailovich Fadeev, and Princess Helen Pavlovna Fadeeva, née Dolgorukaia, the last of the senior branch of the Dolgo-rukii princes; she was descended from Gregory Dolgorukii, a senator during the reign of Peter I, the brother of the famous Jacob Fedorovich Dolgorukii.
