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Nikolai von Meck

Russian engineer and entrepreneur (1863-1929)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 9, 2026
Entity authorityQ18044313 ↗
Source-derived summary

Nikolai Karlovich von Meck (Russian: Никола́й Ка́рлович фон Мекк; 28 April 1863 – 24 May 1929) was a Russian engineer and entrepreneur involved in the development of Russia during the first part of the twentieth century. He was put on trial as part of the Shakhty Trial and executed in 1929.

Life

Nikolai was the sixth son of Karl Otto Georg von Meck, who came from an old Baltic-German noble family originally from Silesia, and Nadezhda von Meck out of eleven children in total. His father, Karl, was among the Russian Empire's first railroad builders after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War motivated the tsar to modernize. Karl died suddenly in 1876. Nadezhda inherited a substantial fortune and became a patron of the arts. Alongside her intense but platonic relationship with Pyotr Tchaikovsky, she also brought Nikolai into contact with such people as Claude Debussy, who stayed with the family as a young man. Nikolai recorded that Debussy acquired the family nickname "le boulliant Achille".

In 1883, Nikolai married Anna Davydova, the niece of Tchaikovsky.

He entered the Imperial College of Law in St.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nikolai von Meck” is russian engineer and entrepreneur (1863-1929). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nikolai, Meck and Russian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1863, 1929, 1876, 1883—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1863-04-28. For this dossier, Nikolai, Meck and Russian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “russian engineer and entrepreneur (1863-1929)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18044313. VIAF identifies the subject as 1819155345592106430007. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1863, 1929, 1876 and 1883.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Nikolai von Meck”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Nikolai von Meck primary sources, Nikolai von Meck archive and Nikolai research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Nikolai von Meck”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Nikolai von Meck” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.