Engelhardt family

During that campaign, he is said to have received the surname Engelhardt ('angelic strength') for saving the life of the French king Philip II Augustus in the Siege of Acre.

The documented origins of the family lie in Switzerland, where Heinrich von Engelhardt is mentioned in the years 1383–1390 as a citizen and councillor in Zurich.

His son Sigismund (Stepan, upon Orthodox baptism) was a Muscovite noble and stolnik (personal attendant upon the Tsar) and a lieutenant in the Smolensk gentry.

The Engelhardt name has been attached to a scientific institute in Moscow, the observatory of Kazan University, the gold medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the main railway station in Smolensk, a crater on the Moon, an asteroid, and a star in the constellation Cygnus.

Potemkin doted on his nieces (and, it is generally assumed in the case of Barbara, Alexandra, and Catherine, had sexual relations) and bequeathed to them some of his great wealth.