Viktor Karl Konrad Wilhelm von[2] Wahl (Russian: Ви́ктор Вильге́льмович Ва́ль, romanizedViktor Vil’gel’movich Val’; 1840–1915) was a Baltic German general, mayor of St. Petersburg, and governor of Vilnius. He came from Baltic German noble Wahl family, which was a branch of the Scottish MacDowall clan. Von Wahl had also been a director of the Kseniinsky Institute, an exclusive school for aristocratic women.

Viktor von Wahl in 1893.
Coat of arms of the Wahl family of 1796, in the Baltic Coat of arms book by Carl Arvid von Klingspor in 1882.[1]

Von Wahl became the governor of Vilna in the autumn of 1901. In 1902, he ordered the arrest and flogging of a number of Jewish and Polish workers who had taken part in a May Day parade.[3] That same year, a Bundist worker, Hirsh Lekert, unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate him, wounding him in the leg and arm. Lekert was tried by military court, sentenced to death and executed.

Von Wahl became a member of the State Council in 1903, and held the title of "Assistant Minister of the Interior and Commander of the Gendarme Corps." after 1902.

He was awarded the Order of Prince Danilo I and a number of other decorations.[4]

Notes

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  1. ^ Klingspor 1882, p. 123.
  2. ^ In German personal names, von is a preposition which approximately means 'of' or 'from' and usually denotes some sort of nobility. While von (always lower case) is part of the family name or territorial designation, not a first or middle name, if the noble is referred to by their last name, use Schiller, Clausewitz or Goethe, not von Schiller, etc.
  3. ^ Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish; Dovid Katz; Basic Books; 2007; p. 260
  4. ^ Acović, Dragomir (2012). Slava i čast: Odlikovanja među Srbima, Srbi među odlikovanjima. Belgrade: Službeni Glasnik. p. 625.

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