Walter Koenig — actor (chekov) with roots in the Russian Empire
Walter Marvin Koenig was born in Chicago on 14 September 1936, the son of Isadore Koenig, a businessman, and Sarah, née Strauss. When he was a child the family moved to the Inwood neighbourhood of Manhattan, where he went to school.
His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who had been living in Lithuania when they emigrated, and on arrival they shortened the family name from Königsberg to Koenig. A genealogical record, not an authoritative source, gives his father's birth as about 1893 in a village near Vilnius, then in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire, and his death as 1956 in Chicago. When the parents left is not documented. Wikipedia describes them as immigrants from the Soviet Union, which cannot be right for Lithuania at any date before 1940: it was part of the Russian Empire until 1918 and independent from 1918 to 1940.
Koenig studied in Iowa and at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he gave up his plan of becoming a psychologist for acting, and from 1962 appeared in television series. In 1967, at the start of the second season, he joined Star Trek as Ensign Pavel Chekov, the ship's young Russian navigator. Costume designers gave him a moptop hairpiece in the style of the Monkees' Davy Jones, and he later said that Chekov's habit of saying 'w' for 'v', as in 'wessel', came from his father, who had the same difficulty. He also wrote the episode 'The Infinite Vulcan' for the animated series.
He played Chekov in the first six Star Trek films, from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) to The Undiscovered Country (1991), and in Star Trek Generations (1994). His book on the making of the first film, Chekov's Enterprise, appeared in 1979 or 1980, and his memoir, Warped Factors, in 1998. From 1994 to 1998 he played the telepath Alfred Bester in Babylon 5. He has also written for television, including Land of the Lost.
In 2012 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2023, at eighty-six, he returned to the role that made him known, voicing President Anton Chekov in Star Trek: Picard.
"His parents, Russian Jewish immigrants, were living in Lithuania when they emigrated to the United States and shortened the family name from Königsberg to Koenig; the year of emigration is not recorded."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Near Vilnius, Vilna Governorate (now Lithuania) — father, born about 1893 (genealogical record)
His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who had been living in Lithuania; a genealogical record gives his father's birth as about 1893 near Vilnius, then in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire. He said Chekov's 'w'-for-'v' accent came from his father's speech.
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Near Vilnius, Vilna Governorate (now Lithuania) — father, born about 1893 (genealogical record). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.