60° 35′ E., at an altitude of 870 ft. above sea-level. It is the most important town of the Urals. Pop. (1860) 19,830; (1897) 55,488. The streets are broad and regular, and several of the houses of palatial proportions. In 1834 Ekaterinburg was made the see of a suffragan bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church. There are two cathedrals—St Catherine’s, founded in 1758, and that of the Epiphany, in 1774—and a museum of natural history, opened in 1853. Ekaterinburg is the seat of the central mining administration of the Ural region, and has a chemical laboratory for the assay of gold, a mining school, the Ural Society of Naturalists, and a magnetic and meteorological observatory. Besides the government mint for copper coinage, which dates from 1735, the government engineering works, and the imperial factory for the cutting and polishing of malachite, jasper, marble, porphyry and other ornamental stones, the industrial establishments comprise candle, paper, soap and machinery works, flour and woollen mills, and tanneries. There is a lively trade in cattle, cereals, iron, woollen and silk goods, and colonial products; and two important fairs are held annually. Nearly forty gold and platinum mines, over thirty iron-works, and numerous other factories are scattered over the district, while wheels, travelling boxes, hardware, boots and so forth are extensively made in the villages. Ekaterinburg took its origin from the mining establishments founded by Peter the Great in 1721, and received its name in honour of his wife, Catherine I. Its development was greatly promoted in 1763 by the diversion of the Siberian highway from Verkhoturye to this place.
EKATERINODAR, a town of South Russia, chief town of the province of Kubañ, on the right bank of the river Kubañ, 85 m. E.N.E. of Novo-rossiysk on the railway to Rostov-on-Don, and in 45° 3′ N. and 38° 50′ E. It is badly built, on a swampy site exposed to the inundations of the river; and its houses, with few exceptions, are slight structures of wood and plaster. Founded by Catherine II. in 1794 on the site of an old town called Tmutarakan, as a small fort and Cossack settlement, its population grew from 9620 in 1860 to 65,697 in 1897. It has various technical schools, an experimental fruit-farm, a military hospital, and a natural history museum. A considerable trade is carried on, especially in cereals.
EKATERINOSLAV, a government of south Russia, having the governments of Poltava and Kharkov on the N., the territory of the Don Cossacks on the E., the Sea of Azov and Taurida on the S., and Kherson on the W. Area, 24,478 sq. m. Its surface is undulating steppe, sloping gently south and north, with a few hills reaching 1200 ft. in the N.E., where a slight swelling (the Don Hills) compels the Don to make a great curve eastwards. Another chain of hills, to which the eastward bend of the Dnieper is due, rises in the west. These hills have a crystalline core (granites, syenites and diorites), while the surface strata belong to the Carboniferous, Permian, Cretaceous and Tertiary formations. The government is rich in minerals, especially in coal—the mines lie in the middle of the Donets coalfield—iron ores, fireclay and rock-salt, and every year the mining output increases in quantity, especially of coal and iron. Granite, limestone, grindstone, slate, with graphite, manganese and mercury are found. The government is drained by the Dnieper, the Don and their tributaries (e.g. the Donets and Volchya) and by several affluents (e.g. the Kalmius) of the Sea of Azov. The soil is the fertile black earth, but the crops occasionally suffer from drought, the average annual rainfall being only 15 in. Forests are scarce. Pop. (1860) 1,138,750; (1897) 2,118,946, chiefly Little Russians, with Great Russians, Greeks (48,740), Germans (80,979), Rumanians and a few gypsies. Jews constitute 4.7% of the population. The estimated population in 1906 was 2,708,700.
Wheat and other cereals are extensively grown; other noteworthy crops are potatoes, tobacco and grapes. Nearly 40,000 persons find occupation in factories, the most important being iron-works and agricultural machinery works, though there are also tobacco, glass, soap and candle factories, potteries, tanneries and breweries. In the districts of Mariupol the making of agricultural implements and machinery is carried on extensively as a domestic industry in the villages. Bees are kept in very considerable numbers. Fishing employs many persons in the Don and the Dnieper. Cereals are exported in large quantities via the Dnieper, the Sevastopol railway, and the port of Mariupol. The chief towns of the eight districts, with their populations in 1897, are Ekaterinoslav (135,552 inhabitants in 1900), Alexandrovsk (28,434), Bakhmut (30,585), Mariupol (31,772), Novomoskovsk (12,862), Pavlograd (17,188), Slavyanoserbsk (3120), and Verkhne-dnyeprovsk (11,607).
EKATERINOSLAV, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on the right bank of the Dnieper above the rapids, 673 m. by rail S.S.W. of Moscow, in 48° 21′ N. and 35° 4′ E., at an altitude of 210 ft. Pop. (1861) 18,881, without suburbs; (1900) 135,552. If the suburb of Novyikoindak be included, the town extends for upwards of 4 m. along the river. The oldest part lies very low and is much exposed to floods. Contiguous to the towns on the N.W. is the royal village of Novyimaidani or the New Factories. The bishop’s palace, mining academy, archaeological museum and library are the principal public buildings. The house now occupied by the Nobles Club was formerly inhabited by the author and statesman Potemkin. Ekaterinoslav is a rapidly growing city, with a number of technical schools, and is an important depot for timber floated down the Dnieper, and also for cereals. Its iron-works, flour-mills and agricultural machinery works give occupation to over 5000 persons. In fact since 1895 the city has become the centre of numerous Franco-Belgian industrial undertakings. In addition to the branches just mentioned, there are tobacco factories and breweries. Considerable trade is carried on in cattle, cereals, horses and wool, there being three annual fairs. On the site of the city there formerly stood the Polish castle of Koindak, built in 1635, and destroyed by the Cossacks. The existing city was founded by Potemkin in 1786, and in the following year Catherine II. laid the foundation-stone of the cathedral, though it was not actually built until 1830–1835. On the south side of it is a bronze statue of the empress, put up in 1846. Paul I. changed the name of the city to Novo-rossiysk, but the original name was restored in 1802.
EKHOF, KONRAD (1720–1778), German actor, was born in Hamburg on the 12th of August 1720. In 1739 he became a member of Johann Friedrich Schönemann’s (1704–1782) company in Lüneburg, and made his first appearance there on the 15th of January 1740 as Xiphares in Racine’s Mithridate. From 1751 the Schönemann company performed mainly in Hamburg and at Schwerin, where Duke Christian Louis II. of Mecklenburg-Schwerin made them comedians to the court. During this period Ekhof founded a theatrical academy, which, though short-lived, was of great importance in helping to raise the standard of German acting and the status of German actors. In 1757 Ekhof left Schönemann to join Franz Schuch’s company at Danzig; but he soon returned to Hamburg, where, in conjunction with two other actors, he succeeded Schönemann in the direction of the company. He resigned this position, however, in favour of H. G. Koch, with whom he acted until 1764, when he joined K. E. Ackermann’s company. In 1767 was founded the National Theatre at Hamburg, made famous by Lessing’s Hamburgische Dramaturgie, and Ekhof was the leading member of the company. After the failure of the enterprise Ekhof was for a time in Weimar, and ultimately became co-director of the new court theatre at Gotha. This, the first permanently established theatre in Germany, was opened on the 2nd of October 1775. Ekhof’s reputation was now at its height; Goethe called him the only German tragic actor; and in 1777 he acted with Goethe and Duke Charles Augustus at a private performance at Weimar, dining afterwards with the poet at the ducal table. He died on the 16th of June 1778. His versatility may be judged from the fact that in the comedies of Goldoni and Molière he was no less successful than in the tragedies of Lessing and Shakespeare. He was regarded by his contemporaries as an unsurpassed exponent of naturalness on the stage; and in this respect he has been not unfairly compared with Garrick. His fame, however, was rapidly eclipsed by that of Friedrich U. L.
