The Elegant Magister 113with representatives of both nobility and commoners handed over the keys
to the city to the general, and a five-year-long Russian occupation of the
city began.^65 Soon after, all officials had to swear an oath of allegiance to the
empress Elizabeth. Russian money and Russian holidays were introduced,
and a Russian governor of the city was appointed.
There was some resistance to the Russians. Most of it came from the
clerics. They were opposed not only to the frequent marriages of Russians
to Königsberg women (which usually involved becoming a member of the
Orthodox Church), but also to the lifestyle of the Russians in general. Any
Russian victory called for a service commemorating and celebrating the oc¬
casion. One of the more upstanding clerics, the preacher of the Schloßkirche,
Arnoldt, once gave a sermon on Mica 7:8, "Rejoice not against me, O mine
enemy (Feindin): when I fall, I shall arise." He was accused of having slan¬
dered her majesty and threatened with expulsion. Though he promised to
retract, he never had to do so because at the assigned service a number of
students created a panic by yelling "Fire!" at an appropriate moment. There
were other incidents. The director of the Royal German Society, Pisanski,
had forgotten to remove the word "Royal" from the door of their confer¬
ence room. The society was outlawed, and even its library had to be removed
from the public building; but on the whole not much changed.^66 Prussian
officials continued to do the work they had done before, and everyone
continued to draw the same salary. The Russians especially favored the
university and its members. The army officers attended many lectures, and
the professors were invited to official receptions and balls, which they had
not been allowed to attend before. All in all, the Russian occupation was good
for Königsberg.^67 While some professors kept their distance from the Rus¬
sians, others became familiar with them. Kant belonged to the latter group.
While he never stooped to the fawning that one of the instructors of poetry,
Watson, engaged in, he did get along.
The Russians contributed to a change in the cultural climate of Königs¬
berg. There was more money, and there was more consumption. This is well
acknowledged by one of Kant's closest acquaintances, Scheffner, who said:
"I date the genuine beginning of luxury in Prussia to the Russian occupa¬
tion." All at once, there was more social activity in Königsberg. Many mer¬
chants, who were accumulating wealth as suppliers of the Russian army, gave
large parties, and Königsberg "became a lively (zeitvertreibender) place."^68
For some, the Russian occupation meant liberation from old preju¬
dices and customs. The Russians liked everything that was "beautiful and
well-mannered." The sharp distinctions between nobility and commoners