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Our family has been searching for our relatives for many years through our great-great-great ... grandfather Johann von Stein (+/- 1780 - after 1834). In Russia, he worked under the name Ivan Fedorovich Stein. He is known in Russia among theater historians. He is the first professional entrepreneur and creator of the Kharkov Theater. He was born tentatively in the early 1780s in Prussia. History of Johann von Stein in the Russian Empire in 1800 - 1837: Johann von Stein came to Russia in the early 1800s to Russia from Germany. Johann von Stein did not accept Russian citizenship, remaining a Prussian subject. Until 1802, he taught fencing, dancing, choreography, the basics of ballet and stage art in the families and family serf theaters of St. Petersburg and Moscow (initially with Count Bartholomew Vasilievich Tolstoy and then with Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev). After the termination of the serf theater of N.P.Sheremetev, from 1802 he gives private dancing and fencing lessons and plays in theatrical productions on the stage of the German theater in Moscow. In 1803-1804 he played in the German Theater of St. Petersburg with entrepreneur Joseph Mirae. From 1804 to 1809, at the invitation of Count Jozef-Augustus Ilinsky, he, as a director and choreographer, led the Count's fortress theater in his ancestral home of Romanov (which the count called Roma nuova ("New Rome")) in the Zhytomyr region. From 1809-1811 he was invited to a Kiev gymnasium as a dance teacher, from where he transferred to the Kharkov University (1812 - 1816) as a teacher of fencing and dancing. In Kiev and then in Kharkov, I.F.Shtein teaches at the University and gives private lessons in fencing and dancing. Johann von Stein becomes an entrepreneur. Continuing to teach at Kharkov University, in 1814 he held an entreprise in Kharkov together with O. I. Kalinovsky. His first troupe was made up of 15 serf children, whom he taught the art of ballet, dance and stage skills. Subsequently, he sold this first acting troupe, trained by a single stage standard, to Count S. M. Kamensky, the owner of the Oryol Theater. In 1816 he left Kharkov University and became the sole entrepreneur, ending his cooperation with O. I. Kalinovsky. In 1816 he built his own theater room, and opened the Johann von Stein Theater in Kharkov. Stein created a professional team, which consisted of more than 40 actors and 20 orchestra members. The crowd reached 100 actors. In addition, a ballet troupe was organized from serf boys and girls recruited from the villages, who, after several years of teaching ballet art, conducted by Johann von Stein with them, formed the first professional ballet troupe to perform independently not only in Little Russia, but also in the capital's theaters . In the 1820s, it was the largest provincial troupe. Regular performances were played simultaneously in Kharkov and Kursk, the theater went on tour in Tula (1823), Odessa (season 1827/28), Kiev (1830-1834). By the talent of the actors, the Stein Theater was also not equal in the province. Ballets, melodramas, vaudevilles, as well as plays by W. Shakespeare, F. Schiller, Moliere, D. I. Fonvizin, I. P. Kotlyarevsky were staged here. The Johann von Stein Theater lasted about 20 years, until the mid-1830s, after which the entrepreneur Fedor Ivanovich Stein stopped his activities and left the Russian Empire forever, returning with his son to Prussia.
There is very little information about his family. The Erik-Amburger-Datenbank Ausländer im vorrevolutionären Russland (https://amburger.ios-regensburg.de/index.php?id=54748) states that his son, Friedrich Wilhelm von Stein, was born on 18.2.1817 in the city Rastenburg. Johann von Stein gave his two daughters to the nobility of the Chernigov Province - the eldest Varvara Ivanovna for Nikolai Ivanovich Arandarenko, the youngest Lydia for Peter Alexandrovich Svechin. They both remained in the Russian Empire, adopted the names of their husbands, their children were born. The son Fyodor Ivanovich Stein (Friedrich Wilhelm von Stein) lived in Russia in 1817-1837 and in 1847-1872. In the years 1838-1848 he served in the Prussian army, was an lieutenant. Our great- ... great-grandmother Varvara Ivanovna Stein (after Arandarenko’s marriage). We ask you to make an assumption about the direction of the search for ancestors Johann von Stein. My email address: slbolvex@rambler.ru