Andrei Stackenschneider was a well-known Saint Petersburg architect. His house was one of the most famous literary and artistic public salons in the city. The so-called ‘Saturdays’ hosted by Stackenschneider were attended by many famous writers including FyOdor DostoEvsky.
Dostoevsky made acquaintance with Andrei Stackenschneider in 1860 and quite often visited his literary salon ever since. He was in close relations with the architect’s children Elena and Adrian. Adrian was a lawyer. Dostoevsky made acquaintance with him in Saint Petersburg in 1873. July 21, 1874, he wrote to his wife from Bad Ems, “I recently met Stackenschneider, the one who works as a prosecutor in the Kharkiv district court. He has just married in Khariv in May and went abroad with his wife <…> He was a very simple-hearted and frank young man and very clever. He came to see me and told me that they had been in Paris, spent money there, and now were on a tight budget in order to get back home. But 5 days ago, in Zurich, a medical celebrity whom he asked to examine his slightly ailing breast accepted the request and was frightened and ordered urgently, while they were there abroad, not to waste time and take a Kränchen treatment for at least two weeks…”
July 14, 1874, Dostoevsky wrote: “Stackenschneider is sick, it seems, even more than I am. He came here for 3 weeks only since he literally cannot afford to stay here longer <…> Stackenschneider finds that my complexion got incomparably better than he remembers me in Petersburg <…> Now, he is the only person I meet, and only at the spring. We drink and walk together. In my opinion he is a lovely and heartful person <…> They invited me. And I visited them once…”
Adrian gave Dostoevsky a lawyer advice, in particular, when the latter was working on The Brothers Karamazov. The writer’s wife, Anna Dostoevskaya, wrote: ‘In the Stackenschneider family, Elena Andreevna’s brother Adrian Andreevich, a man of great intelligence and a sincere admirer of Fyodor Mikhailovich’s talent, was the most beloved one. Adrian Andreyevich, as a talented lawyer, would often give advice to Fyodor Mikhailovich when it came to the law. And Fyodor Mikhailovich owes him that in The Brothers Karamazov every detail of MItya Karamazov’s trial was so accurate that even the most malicious critic (of which there were many) would fail to find an omission or roughness’.
Working on his last novel, Dostoevsky wrote in a letter that he consulted “one prosecutor (a great practitioner).” And in a letter to Elena Stackenschneider dated July 17, 1880, Dostoevsky asked her to inform her brother, his “dear employee, ” of the publication of A Writer”s Diary.
