Baron Nikolai Andreevich Korf /Russian: Николай Андреевич Корф; May 7 (18), 1710 - April 24 (May 5), 1766/ was a general-in-chief, senator, governor of East Prussia and chief of police of St. Petersburg.
Descended from an Ostsee baronial family , he was born in the Prekuln estate in Courland. Until 1740 like many of his compatriots young Korf was in the service of the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna. By the age of thirty, he had risen to the rank of prime minister in the Koporsky cavalry regiment and even became related to the reigning dynasty by marrying the niece of Catherine I.
Thanks to this under Empress Elizabeth he began to quickly advance in the service. Immediately after the accession of Elizabeth Petrovna, he was sent to Kiel to bring from there the nephew of the Empress Duke Karl-Peter-Ulrich, later Emperor Peter Fedorovich. On February 5, 1742 Korf arrived safely with the young duke and on the same day was granted a chamberlain key. In November of the same year he traveled to Sweden with congratulations to the newly elected heir to the Swedish throne, Adolf Friedrich . His election pleased the empress very much, as it ensured that Sweden recognizes Peter Fedorovich as the heir to Russia.
On July 15, 1744, Corfu was awarded the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky and was again entrusted with a “case of state importance” which could only be entrusted to a person who was unconditionally faithful and close - to transport the Braunschweig family from Ranenburg to the Solovetsky Monastery. In early September, Korf removed all this unfortunate family from the place of the then imprisonment, and the former emperor John Antonovich was taking all the time under his direct supervision. Having arrived with the prisoners in Kholmogory he left them here and on his recommendation it was decided not to transport them to the Solovetsky Islands. Korf was granted a senator for the execution of this order.
Thanks to the patronage of his brother-in-law Vorontsov on March 30, 1758 Korf was (already in the rank of lieutenant general), appointed governor general of Königsberg and in this rank he ruled over the Prussian regions occupied during the Seven Years' War.
At the end of 1760, Korf was transferred to St. Petersburg as a police chief general. In his governorship a Commission on the stone structure of St. Petersburg and Moscow was organized, the Winter Palace was completed, the construction of the Church of the Icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir began and the embankments of the Moika and the Catherine Canal began to be dressed in granite. Pickets have been set up to stop drunkenness, quarrels and fights. On the initiative of Korf donations were collected for which a hospital for laborers and a charity home for the poor were created.
With the accession of Emperor Peter III he was made a full general, received the Order of St. Andrew, on February 20, 1762 he was made a lieutenant colonel of the life cuirassier regiment of which the emperor himself was a colonel. On March 21, 1762 he was made "chief director of all the police forces" under the authority of the emperor alone and was charged with presenting considerations for the reorganization of the police department in the cities of the empire.
At a time when the behavior of Pyotr Fedorovich began to displease the guards Korf was very cautious; the stories of Bolotov who was an adjutant with him at that time give every reason to think that if Korf did not know about the impending coup, then he fully understood its inevitability; for his part, he did nothing to reveal anything. On June 28, at the very first movement in Petersburg, he immediately took the side of the empress and was among the persons whom Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich was entrusted with guarding during the absence of the empress, who set out with the guards in Peterhof.
On July 21, 1762 when the empress left for Moscow Korf among the other five senators was left in St. Petersburg in the office of the Senate hile the full Senate followed the empress to Moscow. Until the end of his life Korf retained his title of chief director over the police and enjoyed the trust of Empress Catherine.
