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Baron Peter von Bilderling (born in St Peterburg May 26, 1844 – died in Zapolie September 25, 1900), was an engineer and an officer in the Engineering Corps of the Imperial Russian Army.
Contents
- Biography
- Ijevsk weapons factory
- BRANOBEL Baku oil company
- Agriculture meteorology in Zapolie
- Family
- Writings
- References
He was a humanist known for his writings, notably his book on the military horse, and his reorganisation of the Ijevsk arms factory, the manufacture of Berdanka carbines, and the creation of the no 4 line carbine. He founded the Tsaritsin refinery with Robert Nobel and the Branobel oil company in Baku with Ludwig Nobel. Finally, he established an agricultural and meteorological station in Zapolie, where he invented the roséomètre. He was the brother of Baron Alexandre von Bilderling, the general who participated in the Russo-Japanese War.
Biography
Peter von Bilderling was born to a noble Baltic German family originating from the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, become respectable. His father, Alexandre Otto Hermann Grigoriévitch von Bilderling, was a lieutenant-general in the Engineering Corps. His grandfather, Georges Sigismond von Bilterlings, (1767–1829), was a Lutheran pastor in Mitau, Courland, today known as Jelgava, Latvia. He was a professor, theologian, philosopher and writer. His mother came from an untitled family of the Polish nobility, the Doliwo-Dobrowolski.
Peter von Bilderling was born in Saint Petersburg on May 26, 1844, and died the 25th of September 1900 at his Zapolie property near Louga, where he is buried. He left the Corps of Pages as a major with honors in 1861, then the Michel artillery academy in the first rank. He was attached to the Uhlan regiment of the guards of the Grand Duke Nicholas. He was an aide de camp to General Kartzof in the Caucassus. In 187O, he was sent on a mission by the imperial government to Great Britain and the United States to study gun manufacture.
He married twice:
Ijevsk weapons factory
With an imperial government lease, he went along with Baron Standertskjöld, he directed and reorganised the Ijevsk weapons factory from 1871 to l879, so that it required only domestic raw materials. En 1872, he signed an agreement with Ludvig Nobel, who furnished the machine tools. Under his direction, more than 400,000 Berdanka guns were produced. He created the #4 line carbine. The first telegraph office was opened there. The factory was re-supplied by rail. It was during these years (with production starting of the Berdan rifle) that the division of labour and machine tool production of all the gun mechanism pieces came into its own. The Kalashnikov was invented and manufactured at Ijevsk. The carbine no4 underwent a baptism of fire during the Russo-Turk War. Von Bilderling personally visited the front to evaluate of the effectiveness of this weapon. He was later awarded the right to bear the arms of St George for his actions on the Danube. Wounded in the leg and head, he joined the reserve corps in September 1880.
BRANOBEL, Baku oil company
Instead of using his time and the assets of his mission to find raw materials for the Ijevsk factory, in 1876 Robert Nobel used the 25,000 rubles he had to buy an oil refinery in Tsaritsyne, now known as Volgograd. He saw the refinery as an investment with a great future.
A total of 450,000 rubles were invested in BRANOBEL. Peter von Bilderling put in 300,000 and Baron Standertskjöld 150,000. The business began to show a profit.
Ludwig Nobel convinced his older brother Robert in May 1879 to set up a company, the "Tovarichtchestvo Nephtanavo Proïsvodtsva Bratiev Nobel" (Nobel Brothers Oil Production Company), named BRANOBEL in telegraph communications, and soon, simply NOBEL. Peter von Bilderling remained president of its administrative council until he died in 1900. The capital of the business founded in St Petersburg (3 million rubles in 600 shares of 5000 rubles each) was held as follows:
This 3-million-ruble capitalization was followed by another million rubles en 1880, 2 million and 4 million in 1881 and finally 5 million en 1884 (in 250-rubles shares to allow investors to multiply). BRANOBEL was, at the end of the 19th century, one of the biggest oil companies in the world. Pipeline technology for oil transportation was perfected near Baku by Vladimir Choukhov and Branobel in the years 1878–1880.
Of the money bequeathed by Alfred Nobel to establish the Nobel Prize, 12% came from his shares in BRANOBEL. At that point he was its biggest individual investor. Bolsheviks took Baku on April 28, 1920, and nationalized BRANOBEL.
Agriculture, meteorology in Zapolie
Around 1881, after much searching in Courland, he bought from a property from General Mirkovitch, a property de 400 mas de Zapolie et de 490 mas de Boussany (Luga District, Saint-Petersburg). In 1889, he organised and became very interested in the model agricultural station in Zapolie with a special meteorology station, reputed even abroad. After completely organizing the work, he turned these stations over to the minister of agriculture.
Family
Peter von Bilderling's family was originally from Westphalia, where in 1350 Otbert Boldring owned the fiefs de Cotwik et Overdik in Raalte parish. en étant des notables de la ligue hanséatique. One branch of the family came from the Baltic countries with Johan Buldrink, in Courland, who became the vassal of the Teutonic Order when he received a fief, near Riga, from Wolter von Plettenberg, the grand master of the Order, a fief that carried the name of Bilderlingshof entre le 17th and 1940 (actuellement Bulduri). Hermann von Bilderling had his family entered in the Nobiliaire de Courlande on 1634 (first class) and is cited in the baltic genealogical literature as Uradel (noblesse immémoriale). La branche de Peter von Bilderling came through Livonia with Friedrich, grandson of Johan, and the fiefs of Karrinem and Taifer, then Lithuania with Johan then Melchior and the fied of Miszany. La famille sera reconnue dans son titre de baron dans le Nobiliaire russe par édit du sénat impérial en 1903.
The family arms are: D'argent à une aigle de sable, languée de gueules, la poitrine d'argent chargée d'un peuplier de sinople. Cimier un peuplier arraché de sinople entre un vol de sable à dextre et d'argent à sénestre. Lambrequins de sable doublé d'argent.
The poplar is a reference to the original name, Boldring. (Bolder meant poplar in Old Germand. dictionnaire de Grimm).