Next page : Philippe and Wladimir d'Horrer (Before the Russian Revolution)
INTRODUCTION TO THE RUSSIAN LINEAGE
This lineage, which remained in Russia when Marie-Joseph d'Horrer, Philippe’s father, returned to France, is the eldest lineage of the family. The Russian d'Horrer were part of this rather modest nobility who did not perform great functions but was composed of cultured people, landowners, or engineers who transformed Russia into a modern country.
During the Russian Revolution, some were socialists, but most were monarchists. After the Revolution, their nobility made them "people's enemies", so that they had neither the right to pursue higher education nor to work, and had to subsist as they could. Under Stalin, several ended their lives in the Gulag, others were exiled to Siberia. Despite all the problems encountered because of communism, the family is still existing, especially in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, but also in Moscow and Krasnodar, close to Crimea.
Even if it must be a bit long, I decided to tell all the clashes and misfortunes of this family over there instead of sticking to a simple genealogy, on one hand because it is important that we know here what they have undergone, then... because it is historically interesting! I invite you to return often to the family tree of the Russian lineage (link above).
Our reunion
In France, we believed that the d'Horrer Russian lineage was extinct, since the last exchange of letters between the two cousins Wladimir d'Horrer in Russia and Arsène d'Horrer in France dates from 1885.
It is thanks to the research of Sofia (= Sophie) Vassilievna d'Horrer that we were able to meet again in 1992.
The story is curious: she was looking in the USSR for a French land where to place a commemorative plaque to the d'Horrer victims of communism (DOC 32 : Text of the commemorative plaque made by Sophie d'Horrer )
Then she had the opportunity to emigrate to Israel, and she placed the plaque in the cemetery of the monks of Abu Gosh (the probable site of Emmaus), which is French territory since the Ottomans entrusted the site to France. By chance, the abbot of Abu Gosh was a friend of mine…
We wrote to each other, visited one another; I went to see d’Horrers in Moscow, and I had the opportunity to correspond by letter with Sophie’s sister in Kazakhstan, Olga Smiernitkaya, with their cousin Georges d’Horrer and the latter’s son, Mikhaïl, in Siberia. All were very happy to renew ties between our two branches and to receive the booklet on the family genealogy that I wrote in the 1990s. I also went to Moscow to meet other Russian d’Horrers. But as time passed, these ties gradually loosened again.
Finally, four notes:
1/ Since the unaspirated H and the apostrophe do not exist in Cyrillic, our name is generally written DOPPEP (pronounced Dorrer). Today, some are returning to the spelling with the particle.
2/ In Russia, unmarried young women bear the family’s noble title.
3/ The name Dorrer is rare in Russia, but there was also a fairly well-known actor in the 1930s and his descendants. He has no connection to us; that family is Austrian. Mikhaïl Dorrer told me some time ago that this Germanic name is sometimes mistaken for a Jewish name, which remains a source of discrimination in Russia.
4/I have provided links to pages in Russian or English. Simply right-click and select “translate into French” to gain access to a wealth of information.