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ABSTRACT
This article provides an exposé of the life and work of Anatoliy Yevgenyevich Geynts, in Norway known as Anatol Heintz. Heintz was born and raised in St Petersburg, became a Russian refugee after the revolutionary events in Russia in 1917–1918, and ended up in Norway with his family. Later Heintz became renowned in the world of science as a Professor, Academician, and one of the founding fathers of Norwegian palaeontology, as well as a well-known promoter of scientific knowledge among the common people in Norway. At the same time, he was an active participant in and organizer of scientific expeditions to Spitsbergen (Svalbard) in search of fish fossils, but he also became one of the pioneers in the protection of wild animals and establishment of natural parks on this Arctic archipelago. Heintz’s life is examined against the background of social and cultural processes that Russian emigrants faced in this so-called “first wave” of emigration in the twentieth century, processes of socio-cultural adaptation and integration into their new country of residence. The conditions for finding oneself and ways of preserving one’s Russianness in the large colonies of the Russian diaspora, which appeared in Berlin, Prague, and Paris, are compared with the conditions in the northern periphery of Europe and a small country like Norway. The paper focuses on what Anatol Heintz did to preserve his Russian identity, and how he simultaneously struggled to become fully recognized as a Norwegian citizen.
Acknowledgment
This article is a revised and supplemented version of: Nielsen, J. P. and V. V. Tevlina, 2020. “Norvezhskaya sudba paleontologa i peterburzhtsa A.E. Geyntsa (1898–1975).” Noveyshaya istoriya Rossii (St. Petersburg) 10 (4): 933–947. The authors hereby extend their gratitude to two anonymous reviewers, who have suggested valuable changes in the English version of the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 «Zadruga» was the first cooperative publishing house in Russia (1911 – early 1923). The founder and director was the historian S. P. Melgunov. «Zadruga» specialized in publishing inexpensive books in the spirit of “popular socialism” (narodnyy sotsialism), the ideas of which were popular among certain parts of the Russian intelligentsia in the beginning of the twentieth century. In the course of its existence «Zadruga» published more than 500 books of high quality and a very broad range of topics, from social sciences, history and political literature – to music and childrens’ literature.
2 On his father’s side, Valery Carrick was descended from a family of British citizens who had lived in Russia since the 1820s but had never lost their roots or citizenship. In the 1850s, his father, William Carrick, permanently settled in St Petersburg and became a well-known portrait photographer, artist and pioneer in Russian genre and landscape photography. For more about William Carrick, see Kjetsaa (Citation1981, 3–4).
3 St. Petersburg was called Petrograd from August 1914 until January 1924, when after V.I. Lenin’s death it was renamed Leningrad. In September 1991 the city got back its old name, St. Petersburg.
4 Most of Valery Carrick’s posthumous papers are in the National Library of Norway, Spesiallesesalen. Carrick collection, F.4199.
5 Such reactions to the Russian immigration to Norway are to be found on the pages of newspapers like: Gudbrandsdølen (Lillehammer), Gudbrandsdalens Social-Demokrat (Lillehammer), Tidens Krav (Kristiansand); Morken (Citation1984, 187–190).
6 In a letter to Alexander Rubetz (a Russian Orthodox priest residing in Sweden) on 3 September 1938, V. V. Carrick writes: “I highly appreciate the intercourse with the Heintz family, because we belong to the same culture. And there are no other people around, who would understand you from half a word”. National Library of Norway, Spesiallesesalen. The Carrick collection. F.4199. Box 4. Pack 18 (Part 7).
7 Later B. Ye. Goffmann (Hoffmann) became famous throughout Norway as the founder and director of the Norwegian balalaika orchestra (established in the early 1920s), using as his artist name Boris Borisov.
8 Personal communication by Professor Hans Arne Nakrem, Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, 22 April 2023.
9 See also interview with Anatol Heintz in the NRK documentary “Svalbard 1964”: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/svalbard-1964/1964/FOLA64000864/avspiller, repeated in another NRK documentary “Polarlandets planter og dyr” (1969) https://tv.nrk.no/serie/svalbard-1969/1969/FSKO00003869/avspiller.
10 The correspondence between Anatol Heintz and Academician Yuriy Orlov is held in the Natascha Heintz family archive. For more about Orlov and his works see Orlov (Citation1989).
11 For more on the life of prisoners in the Grini camp, see (Nansen Citation2016). Odd Nansen was the son of the Norwegian polar explorer, diplomat and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen.
12 Baltic Germans were a German-speaking minority in what is now Estonia and Latvia – territory that was part of the Russian Empire from the eighteenth century until the dissolution of the Empire after the 1917 Revolution. During that period, Baltic Germans formed the social elite in this part of the Russian state. In the nineteenth century, one in eight of all Russian civil servants were Baltic Germans, who were renowned for their loyalty towards the Tsar and their long tradition of serving the crown. The Baltic Germans were not only civil servants, but also doctors, foresters, country pastors, naval officers, and burgher manor owners in the Baltic area (see Thaden Citation1994). Anatol Heintz’s grandfather, Alfred Heintz, was born into a merchant family in 1842 in today’s Ventspils (Latvia). His family moved to St Petersburg, where he later held the post of archivist in the General Evangelical-Lutheran Consistory for more than 30 years. After the turn of the century, he was also director of the city’s telegraph department number 23 (https://spslc.ru/burial-places/gejncz-alfredvasilevich.html?ysclid=lf85ip0gsx784930984). The Hoffmanns were also Baltic Germans, but as far as we know this German family background was not thematized in connection with Anatol Heintz’ adaptation to Norwegian conditions. In Norway he was considered a Russian (russkiy), since he was born in Russia before coming to Norway, and since Russian was his first language. Of course, he might have been just a rossiyanin, which is what Russians call someone with Russian citizenship, who might have a mother tongue other than Russian, such as Tatar, Chechen, Nenets or Georgian, to name a few of the more than 30 languages that are in official use in different parts of Russia today. In the anglophone world, Russian is usually applied to describe both a russkiy and a rossiyanin. A. Ye. Heintz was a rossiyanin but also a russkiy since Russian was his first language.
13 Like her father, Natascha Heintz became a palaeontologist, specializing on early fishes. She has inter alia contributed to the study of mammoths in Norway during the last ice age and taken part in expeditions to Svalbard. In 1960 she organized, together with her father and T. Winsnes, an excursion of geologists to Svalbard, during which the first traces of land-living dinosaurs on the archipelago were found. From 1960–1966 Natascha Heintz was employed by the Norwegian Polar Institute, then from 1967–2000 she worked at the Palaeontological Museum in Oslo, her father’s institution.
14 Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov (1915–1999) later became a prominent Russian historian, orientalist and linguist. In the 1920s, as the son of M. A. Dyakonov, a member of staff at the Soviet trade delegation in Norway, he lived in Oslo where his family was acquainted with the Heintz family.
15 Anatol Heintz received multiple titles and awards for his scientific work, and we will mention just a few here. In 1939 he received the King Haakon VII medal, and shortly thereafter became a full member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences. In addition to this, he was an honorary member of the Geological Society of London, a Corresponding Fellow of the Academy of Sciences of Uppsala and the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg (Sweden), a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London and the Society of Vertebrate Palaeontology in the USA.