Dear Jan,

I have no research of my own to show here, but only reproduce the 
results of Agnes Stache-Weiske's study. According to her exposition, 
foreigners, Germans in particular, were specifically recruited in the 
years of the founding of the city of St. Petersburg, where Germans 
soon formed the largest foreign population group. Among the 
foreigners, the merchants belonged to a separate group. Since the 
German merchants were not considered as a unit, but were named after 
their cities of origin (Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock, etc.), the English 
merchants formed the largest group in the 18th century, followed by 
the Dutch (op. cit., p. 386).

The first "Böhtlingk" who came to St. Petersburg - possibly in 1713 - 
was Otto's great-grandfather Peter, who was baptized in Lübeck on 
15.6.1689. Together with the Dutch merchant Abraham van Limburg, Peter 
Böhtlingk had a trading house in St. Petersburg since 1720 at the 
latest. Their trading house "van Limburg & Bohtlingk" is mentioned as 
one of the nineteen Dutch merchant houses located there at that time. 
Peter Böhtlingk therefore joined the Dutch merchant community and not 
that of his hometown Lübeck (op. cit., p. 387).

Although Peter Böhtlingk belonged to the Dutch merchant community, he 
was a member of the German Evangelical Lutheran congregation in St. 
Petersburg. The German Protestants had already received the right to 
establish their own church in 1704, even before the Dutch, English or 
French congregations. Peter Böhtlingk held the office of a 
churchwarden and was also the church elder of the St. Petri Church. 
His first wife was the daughter of the churchwarden Johann Sigfried 
Snettler; after her death Peter married Katharina Feldhusen, who came 
from a German merchant family (op. cit., pp. 389 f.).

Best,
Roland Steiner