Vaksel (Platão de)

He was born on the outskirts of Petrograd on 14 August 1844, the son of noble parents. He studied philosophy at the University of Leipzig, receiving his doctorate in 1874. He came to Madeira in November 1861 to accompany his sister, who was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis and died here some months later. He stayed on the island for some time and made special studies of Madeiran music, on which he published an interesting article entitled Alguns dados da historia da Musica na Madeira in the Gazeta da Madeira in 1869; it was reproduced in the Jornal do Comercio.

Platão de Vaksel was also in Lisbon, to carry out historical and bibliographical research in the principal libraries, and afterwards returned to Madeira, where he had many friends. In June 1870 he went back to Russia, where he held the high office of director of the chancery in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of that empire. He was a member of the Instituto de Coimbra and of the Lisbon Geographical Society (Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa). Besides the work already mentioned, he published many others, whose titles are listed in volume XVIII, page 295, of the Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez; two of them, on music in Portugal, appeared in the Gazeta da Madeira in 1866 and 1868.

Platão de Vaksel was still alive when the war between Germany and Russia began, in which the latter country fought for some time alongside France and England, but after that no further news of him reached this island.