Galitzine
Prince Piotr Galitzine and Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria
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TMK IPSCO chairman revealed as a prince of a man -- chicagotribune.com
13 Sept 2009
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When TMK IPSCO of Downers Grove announced a new chairman last year, it omitted everything interesting about Piotr Galitzine.
And so for an entire year the Chicago business community hasn't known that there is a Russian prince living downtown with his wife, Archduchess Maria Anna, a granddaughter of Karl I, the last emperor of Austria.
In Russia, Galitzine's name is instantly recognizable. In Chicago, well, he doesn't get out much. Galitzine arrived here in September 2008, soon after TMK, Russia's largest producer of oil and gas piping, bought the American assets of IPSCO.
Galitzine's royal title traces back 675 years. That's when an ancestor, a Lithuanian prince, married into a royal family in Russia. The Russians permitted the title to be passed on to his descendants.
After relocations forced by the Communist Revolution and World War II, Galitzine's parents moved to Peru, where he was born in 1955, then to New York. A mutual friend introduced Galitzine to his future wife at a bar on New York's Upper East Side. They married in 1981.
in 1992 he joined Mannesman AG, the German engineering giant, running its Russian operations.
"I was finally able to return to Russia with my wife and six children," Galitzine said. "But the first time I went back, it was frightening. My friend told me to report everything I had of value at customs. I listed 'wedding ring, gold' and 'cross, gold.' Although it was 1991, Russia hadn't changed much. The customs agent said, 'Surely stolen from the people.' I went ballistic."