Ernst Albrecht — politician / economist with roots in the Russian Empire
Ernst Albrecht was born in Heidelberg in 1930 to the physician and philosopher Carl Eduard Albrecht and Adda Albrecht, née Berg. He studied economics at Tübingen, Cornell and Bonn, and joined the administration of the new European Communities in Brussels in the 1950s, rising to director-general — one of the senior civil service posts in the Commission — before leaving for national politics.
He became Minister-President of Lower Saxony in 1976 and held the office for fourteen years, one of the longer state premierships of the Federal Republic. His tenure covered the early German debates on nuclear waste storage, and in 1979 he took the decision to admit several hundred Vietnamese refugees rescued in the South China Sea under the Cap Anamur programme, at a point when the Federal Republic had no established procedure for doing so.
He was a great-great-grandson of Baron Ludwig Knoop through the Bremen cotton merchants George Alexander Albrecht and Carl Albrecht. By his generation the family's connection to the Russian Empire was three removes distant and entirely historical: the Knoop enterprises had been nationalised more than a decade before his birth, and the Albrechts had long since re-established themselves in Bremen and then in Lower Saxony as merchants, scholars, musicians and public servants.
His younger brother was the conductor George Alexander Albrecht; his nephew is the conductor Marc Albrecht. Of his seven children, two entered public life: Hans-Holger Albrecht in international media, and Ursula von der Leyen, who followed him into the European Commission at its presidency. He died in 2014.
Tracing the roots — Moscow (Russia)
Five generations after Knoop arrived in Moscow, the family line reached the European Commission - twice.
2x great-grandson of Baron Ludwig Knoop through the Bremen cotton merchants George Alexander Albrecht and Carl Albrecht. Elder brother of the conductor George Alexander Albrecht; father of Ursula von der Leyen and Hans-Holger Albrecht.
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Moscow (Russia). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.