Grosschopff, Anna Ivanovna

• * c.1799
• oo c. 1828
• † c.1838

"Alexander Blank had the theory that it was very beneficial for women to have many children, but Anna Grosschopf gave up the ghost after her fifth. She had one son and four daughters, her third daughter Mariya being Lenin’s future mother. The son, Dmitry, for a time studied in the faculty of law at Kazan University, but committed suicide in 1850 at the age of nineteen. It fell to Anna Grosschopf ’s widowed sister Ekaterina von Essen to bring up the girls. She gave them an education which went well beyond that which daughters of the nobility traditionally received. She taught them German, French and English besides giving them piano lessons. The seriousness with which these studies were undertaken is indicated by the fact that in 1863 Mariya Blank was able to pass the examinations which qualified her as a teacher of Russian, French and German." (White 2001: 16)

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References

• Backman, Christina. “Lenins svenska anor.” Släkt och Hävd №1 (1995): 253–273, p. 264.
• Kruse, Günter. ”Die Familie des fränkischen Dichters und Sprachwissenschaftlers Friedrich Rückert und Ahnengemeinschaften mit Lenin.” [The family of the Franconian poet and linguist Friedrich Rückert and the ancestral ties with Lenin.] [in German] Archiv für Familiengeschichtsforschung no. 4 (2006), quoted in Renner, Manfred. ”Lenins Parchimer Vorfahren.” Ahnenforschung.net (2008). (accessed January 14, 2011).
• Kruse, Günter. "Vorfahren Lenins in Mecklenburg" [Lenin's ancestors in Mecklenburg]. Verein für mecklenburgische Familien- und Personengescheiste e. V. (2007). mfp.math.uni-rostock.de
• White, James D. Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (European History in Perspective). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. ISBN 0333721578