2. Orthodox communities in Germany and attempts to unify them in 1933–1941.

Berlin and German Diocese
of the Russian Orthodox Church

• Diocesan administration: Germany, Berlin. Wildensteiner Straße, 10, 10318, Berlin, Germany
• Tel.: +49–(030) 503-79-488; fax: 509–81–53
• Official site:

Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church began to appear in Germany in the 18th century, thanks to the revitalization of Russian-German ties both at the level of crown bearers and aristocrats, and at trade and diplomacy.
From the very beginning, they coexisted with churches of other Orthodox diasporas, and the main concern of the Russian Church on German soil was not missionary work, but the preservation of the faith and the salvation of its flock. During the Synodal period, like other foreign Russian churches, German churches were under the jurisdiction of the St. Petersburg bishops. The establishment of the Berlin diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church can be considered in 1921, when Patriarch All-Russian Saint Tikhon entrusted Archbishop Eulogius (Georgievsky) with the management of Russian parishes in Western Europe, since at that time Bishop Eulogius was in Berlin. However, already in 1922 he moved to Paris. After the break between Metropolitan Evlogii and the Russian Church Abroad in 1926, Bishop Tikhon (Lyashchenko), who was appointed to the Berlin See, as well as most German parishes, remained under the jurisdiction of the latter.

The diocesan structure under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate in Germany was restored only after the Second World War. The parishes within Germany constituted the German Deanery within the Western European Exarchate. On August 15, 1957, the diocese was restored as an independent diocese and separated from the exarchate. Then it became the center of the Central European Exarchate, remaining the exarchate until the abolition of the exarchate in 1990. On November 25, 1965, the Tegel Vicariate was formed in the Berlin diocese, and on December 28 of the same year, the West German Vicariate was also formed.

On December 22, 1992, Düsseldorf and Baden were annexed to the Berlin diocese, after which the entire reunified Germany became part of the diocese. After the collapse of the USSR, a stream of emigrants from the countries of the former socialist camp poured into Germany. Over the 15 years from the beginning of the 1990s to the second half of the 2000s, more than 300 thousand people arrived from the countries of the former Soviet Union, many of whom began to seek spiritual solace in the Church. This led to a rapid growth in the number of parishes of the diocese, which by the end of the 2000s were in every large German city. Since 2006, the construction of the first monastery of the diocese has been underway. After the restoration of communication between the Russian Church in the Fatherland and abroad, Germany was distinguished by the lively and fruitful interaction of the local diocese in direct subordination of the Patriarchate and the diocese of the Church Abroad.

Nowadays it unites parishes in Germany. Cathedral City - Berlin. Cathedral - Resurrection (Berlin).

Historical names

• Berlin and Belgian (mentioned 1945 - mentioned November 16, 1948)
• Berlin and German (mentioned September 26, 1950 - mentioned June 1960)
• Central European (mentioned June 30, 1960 - mentioned June 16, 1962)
• Berlin and Central European (October 10, 1962 - mentioned July 29, 1986)
• Berlin and Leipzig (mentioned January 31, 1991 - December 22, 1992)
• Berlin and German (since December 22, 1992)

Statistics

• OK. 1992 - 12 parishes [1].
• 2006 - 50 parishes; 38 clergy (29 priests, 9 deacons) [2].
• con. 2000s - 61 parishes; 1 monastery; 54 clergy (42 priests, 12 deacons, of which 11 are monastics). There are about a million Orthodox people in Germany, among whom Russians, Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Romanians predominate [3].

Bishops

• Tikhon (Lyaschenko) (April 28, 1924 - June 1926)
• Alexander (Nemolovsky) (1945 - November 16, 1948)
• Sergius (Korolyov) (November 16, 1948 - September 26, 1950)
• Boris (Vic) (September 26, 1950 - November 11, 1954)
• Mikhail (Chub) (August 15, 1957 - March 5, 1959)
• John (Razumov) (March 5, 1959 - June 21, 1960)
• John (Wendland) (June 30, 1960 - June 16, 1962)
• Filaret (Denisenko) (June 16 - October 10, 1962) v/u, bishop. Luzhsky

• Jonathan (Kopolovich) (June 23, 1966 - October 7, 1967) v/u, bishop. Tegelsky; acting Central European Exarch

• Feofan (Galinsky) (January 31 - December 27, 1991) v/u, bishop. Kashirsky

• Anthony (Sevryuk) (September 11 - December 28, 2017) monk, bishop. Zvenigorodsky

Russians in Germany. Part 1

– Father Nikolai, you are the secretary of the German diocese of the Russian Church Abroad and the clergyman of the new cathedral in honor of the holy new martyrs and confessors of Russia in Munich. You know the Russian diaspora well. Please tell us about the roots of Russian Orthodoxy in Germany, about the construction of churches there.

– Russian Orthodoxy has been present in Germany for about 300 years. Under Peter I, a chapel was opened in Berlin in 1718, which existed until 1837. Then this embassy church was moved to the new building of the Russian Embassy at Unter den Linden, 7. This church served about five thousand Orthodox Christians, not only Russians, but also Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, Romanians... There were also chapels associated with the political relations of Russia and Germany. They are no longer there. The existing churches date back to the 19th and 20th centuries. Thus, on the territory of the German diocese there are churches built back in tsarist times, there are churches built in the 60s and 90s of the 20th century in Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, but, in addition, there are also so-called liturgical points are places equipped for our worship services. For example, one such place is a barrack that remained in the city of Amberg from the Second World War, which I mentioned in a recent replica article “It was impossible to understand this from the outside,” or other premises, even German churches, which, however, do not belong to us . In them we are given the opportunity to perform divine services. But parishes usually stay there for many years, decades... Over the years, these places become home, but it’s all the more unpleasant that they are not our own. Thus, the history of the German diocese is not short, it covers the tsarist, pre-revolutionary times, then the first, second and third emigration, and now new parishes are opening in different cities. This is a consequence of a new wave - mainly immigrants.

Orthodox church building in Germany began with the St. Alexander Church in Potsdam (1829), where there was a Russian military colony “Alexandrovka”. There are still huts there and even some descendants of Russian soldiers from the tsarist era still live there.

The majestic temple stands on the burial site of Grand Duchess Elizabeth, niece of Emperors Nicholas I and Alexander I, wife of Prince Adolf of Nassau, who died at the age of 19 during childbirth. This temple was built in 1845–1855 by the joint efforts of Prince Adolf, who donated his wife’s dowry for the construction, and Emperor Nicholas I. The temple rises above the city on the forested Neroberg hill. There is also a Russian cemetery nearby. Then the house was built. This temple in style is somewhat reminiscent of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, since the German architect who built this temple deliberately followed Thon’s drawings. For us in communist times, this was a kind of banner and a living reminder of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior until its restoration.

This first large temple was, as you understand, built due to dynastic ties, as well as earlier the tomb (terrible looking!) for the Grand Duchess Catherine near Stuttgart on Rotenberg and later the tomb church (very nice!) in Weimar, built for the great Princess Maria Pavlovna in 1860–1862 in the cemetery where Schiller and Goethe are buried. Dynastic connections also underlie the construction of the temple in Darmstadt, which I will talk about later.

The reason for the construction of a number of other churches of the pre-revolutionary period in Germany is different. It is known that from the second half of the 19th century, not only the Russian aristocracy, but also other representatives of Russian society, including famous writers, went to Germany to relax and be treated at the waters. In Baden-Baden, for example, both Dostoevsky and Turgenev visited, in Bad Ems Dostoevsky worked on “The Brothers Karamazov”, Bad Homburg and again Wiesbaden are mentioned in his story “The Gambler”. All these “Bads” and “-Badens” were famous for their healing waters. They drank them, bathed in them (took baths), and for breathing in the environment of atomized water, special buildings have been preserved to this day - “salinas” (millions of knots are attached to a huge wooden frame, along which water drips, and inside there are corridors for walking). Resorts such as Marienbad (Marianske Lazne) and Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary) were popular with Russians even during the Soviet period, since they were located on the territory of the modern Czech Republic. Both resorts have one beautiful Orthodox church. There are similar churches in the German diocese - in Bad Ems (1876), Baden-Baden (1882), Bad Homburg (1899), Bad Kissingen (1901), Bad Nauheim and Bad Brückenau (1908). Of course, not everyone was cured, so in Bad Kissingen, for example, there is a crypt for coffins sent home to Russia.

Mention should also be made of the memorial church in Leipzig (1913), built in memory of the Battle of the Nations, the church at the Russian cemetery in Berlin-Tegel (1893), churches in Dresden (1874) and Stuttgart (1895). Of course, everyone has their own story, everything is full of history.

The temple in Darmstadt was built in memory of the wedding of the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas and the Tsarina-Martyr Alexandra, who was from this city. The temple was founded in 1897 and consecrated in 1899. Both celebrations took place in the presence of the highest persons. The royal family was also present, along with Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife, the Venerable Martyr Elizabeth, at the wedding of the Greek Prince Andrew and Princess Alice von Battenberg in the Darmstadt Church in 1903. Many members of European royal families were present there.

In fact, Orthodox parishes were small before the first emigration, but there were outstanding clergy in Germany. Three of them should be named. These are Archpriest John Bazarov (1819–1895), who left the most interesting memories of his activities in Germany (we published them in the “Bulletin of the German Diocese”), the famous Archpriest John Yanyshev (1826–1910), later the confessor of the royal family, and, finally, Archpriest Alexy Maltsev (1854–1916). The latter translated almost the entire range of services and the Trebnik into German. In his thick volumes the text is arranged in parallel columns: Church Slavonic - German. Unfortunately, that language is outdated and therefore new translations are required... In addition, Father Alexy was very active in seeking the founding of new churches and for this purpose created the St. Vladimir Brotherhood. Two such churches (in Bad Nauheim and Bad Kissingen) are cared for by the brotherhood to this day.

– Father Nikolai, please tell us about the main stages of the formation of Orthodox communities from those flows of Russian emigration that came to Europe after the revolution, then World War II.

These churches, in fact, were used after the revolution for the spiritual nourishment of the emigration. Of course, churches in the provinces, where so many people were not thrown, were in less demand. Berlin is a completely different matter. In the 1920s, daily Russian newspapers were published in Berlin. This must have been reminiscent of the current situation there, since now there are even television programs, radio programs in Russian, and, as in a number of other cities, magazines, newspapers, shops, and so on. But the nature of the emigration itself was different. Until 1922, the administration of the Western European Diocese was located in Berlin, the head of which was Metropolitan Eulogius (Georgievsky). He moved to Paris when the Germans recognized the USSR and gave the former embassy to the Bolsheviks. The embassy church was immediately closed. Divine services were held at the cemetery in Berlin-Tegel and in Potsdam in the royal churches. Then they bought a large house in Berlin, in which they built a temple on the top floor and onion domes on the roof. But after Black Friday, the house was sold under the hammer because the community could not pay the mortgage.

In the second half of the 1930s, under Archbishop Tikhon (Lyashchenko), the cathedral was built. This and other churches in East Germany, located in the “Soviet zone,” have been governed by the Moscow Patriarchate since the end of World War II.

The first emigration to some extent made use of all these churches in Germany, but the difficulty was, and still is, that the mentioned resort towns, in which there are beautiful churches of the tsarist era, are not always located close to those centers in which you can live and work.

– Isn’t there at least an approximate figure for how many Russians there were in Germany in the 1920s?

– Historians argue, of course, but they believe that that emigration numbered from one and a half to two million people. Sometimes they talk about three million...

– Only in Germany?

- No, in general. But since I have not specifically studied this issue, I am not sure of the numbers. I think that those who left

Russia. But church emigration, or “church abroad,” was, perhaps, greater. Many found themselves abroad completely unexpectedly due to changes in borders. The fate of the Orthodox who found themselves in the new Poland and those who were in the Baltic states, Finland or Manchuria was very different. But in the church these different streams interacted. And this interaction lies at the heart of the Russian Church Abroad as a whole.

It is believed that, as a result of the Russian Revolution, by 1921 there were fifty to eighty thousand emigrants in Germany. And already in 1922 the number of refugees exceeded half a million. But post-war Germany could not integrate such a number of people. Many of them “dispersed” throughout Europe. In particular, they moved to France. So by 1928, statistics say one hundred and fifty thousand. And in the most interesting book by A. Nikitin (“The Nazi regime and the Russian Orthodox community in Germany”, Moscow, 1998) it is said that the Gestapo in 1935 counted about eighty thousand people among the Russian emigration. Official statistics considered a sixth of them to be Orthodox—thirteen thousand. These are the known numbers.

However, it must be said that a number of those who moved to France ended up in Germany in 1940 as “labor force”. The French mayors preferred, when the Germans demanded the allocation of labor, to hand over these “strangers” first. So the Russian people, dispossessed by the revolution, who had lived in France for a decade and a half, again found themselves in wartime Germany, but against their will... They joined the number of those who ended up on German territory at the end of the war.

Statistically, of course, no role was played by some intermediate phenomenon - not the first and not the second emigration, but a kind of “one and a half” emigration. Emigration was replenished in the 1930s by some such “droplets”. Even if these were special cases, they are still not entirely isolated. Perhaps Stalin allowed travel for the desired currency, but I don’t know how much this was connected with the first five-year plan, but it was definitely connected with the history of my family.

So, my mother arrived in Berlin from Russia in 1933. My grandfather, N.F. Redlikh, was in a camp in the Kemi region (SLON - Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp). But my grandmother, E.R. Prova, then managed - with the help of E. Peshkova, the wife of M. Gorky, and the Red Cross - to contact my parents, who belonged to the first emigration and already lived in Berlin in 1920. Although the surnames on my mother’s side, as you can see, are not Russian, these were largely Russified families. When my grandfather’s term ended, the Redlich family managed to leave abroad for a huge sum at that time, paid by relatives. Two parents and seven children left! Except for my grandmother, everyone in the family was Orthodox. This is how boys and girls from Soviet Russia appeared in Berlin when “the border was locked.” At the same time, my grandfather, who saw the SS men marching and singing from the window, said to my mother: “Asya, it seems to me that we have fallen from the frying pan into the fire!” In 1933, my mother was 16 years old. She completed her studies in Berlin. She knew Archimandrite John (Shakhovsky). The elder brother Roman graduated from the University of Berlin with a degree in philosophy, and in his old age, when this became possible, that is, in the 1990s, he taught in Moscow for several years, enjoying communication with the new generation.

In Berlin, the Redlikhs met another pastor, now famous in Russia, Father Alexander Kiselev, who came from Estonia. At the end of the 1930s, many Germans from Eastern Europe began to arrive, responding to the slogan “Home to the Reich!” Among them, at a certain historical moment, were again Russian people who had German ancestors, for example, who lived in the Baltic states and then left the Soviet regime. Father Alexander is a living example of the fact that people who were not Germans at all came with this stream. The German, who allowed Alexander’s father and mother to board the ship, gave him a pass with the words: “We are all from Adam!”

Finally, in 1941–1942, Berlin and all of Germany were already crowded with Russian people, either Orthodox since childhood, or now discovering Orthodoxy in a military situation, because then historical Rus' was reviving after unconsciousness. At this time, my father also ended up in Germany.

It was a scary time. There is evidence that in the first year of the war, the Germans, not ready to accept such a number of prisoners of war, killed three and a half million Russian prisoners of war, who lived in appalling conditions, in dugout pits... Typhus, famine were rampant there, and there were cases of cannibalism. Nizhny Novgorod historian A. Kornilov recently published the memoirs of one of the survivors of this time ( S. G. Kulish

. Missing: A Tale of Prisoners. Nizhny Novgorod, 2003). My father told me the same thing. The Soviet government, as we know, betrayed these people, left them to their fate, did not allow them to have the status of prisoners of war, and deprived them of the support of the Red Cross. Those who survived ended up in Germany.

And another huge flow: the Germans exported “labor force” from Russia, the so-called “Ostarbeiters” (eastern workers), or in short “Ostovtsy” (according to the inscription “Ost” on the sleeve). For example, some bazaar was surrounded by the military, they took those who were stronger and put them in trucks... But violence was not always behind the acquisition of “workers.” Some “Ostovites” went to work voluntarily, expecting some prospects.

In general, it seems to me that the topic of the first two or three years of the war to the west of the front requires the most in-depth historical study. It seems to me extremely important that Russia realizes that this path of the Russian people, and indeed the Second World War in general, looks somewhat different than it is customary to look at it now. The view needs serious adjustment based on historical material, which still needs to be obtained in order to present the picture in its entirety. Perhaps the time has not yet come for this. I don’t even know if this will become possible in the near future. But I really hope to see it. If we want to comprehend the fate of the Russian people in that world cataclysm, the restoration of church life and much, much more, in a word, to perceive the comprehensive, not one-sided truth about the fate of Russia, then it is necessary to consider all this realistically.

According to my data, at the end of the war there were about five million USSR citizens in Germany who, according to the Yalta agreements, were subject to “return to their homeland.” These forced repatriations, carried out by the Allies in Germany and Austria, were often accompanied by bloodshed. All this is again a special historical topic. According to the Yalta Treaty, everyone living on Soviet territory by 1939 had to return to the USSR, whether they wanted it or not. American and British politicians then took such a convenient position: if someone does not want to return to their homeland, it means that they are a war criminal or a traitor. In reality, of course, these were ordinary Russian people who found themselves between two totalitarian atheistic regimes. Well, Stalin, naturally, considered those who visited the West, if not ready, then potential “enemies of the people,” traitors. There was no mercy for those.

This is how a second stream of emigration was formed - people who managed to avoid returning after the war. Those who returned (either by force or voluntarily) found themselves in Russia as second-class citizens, if they survived at all. Many were immediately destroyed, others gradually died in the camps. Modern historians say that more than three and a half million returned.

The Russian Church Abroad of the first emigration absorbed all this human and church experience of meeting with the second emigration, with the new sub-Soviet Russia, as a huge upsurge of faith among the Russian people. The Church Abroad did not just join him. It then largely began to consist of these new people who escaped forced repatriation.

During the war, the German diocese tried - as can be seen, in particular, from the diocesan congress of 1942 - with all its might to care for prisoners of war, even in camps, and the “ostovtsy”. Russian historian M.V. Shkarovsky worked in German archives and describes a lot in his book (Nazi Germany and the Orthodox Church. M., 2002). The Nazis discouraged such feeding, but anyone who lived under a totalitarian regime knows that officially impossible things can be unofficially possible. (Here we must make the same distinction between Nazis and Germans as between Communists and Russians).

Father Alexander Kiselev published memoirs about one such case in a Russian newspaper in the 1990s. He told me the same thing personally. He managed to penetrate the camp near Nuremberg, whose commander favored such activities. Then this chief suffered for holding a divine service in the camp, which was attended by 500 people, many of whom received communion! Of course, the priests worked tirelessly then.

And what happened every Easter in Berlin! In general, the “Ostovtsy”, eastern workers, were forbidden to come to our churches. But they attended services through bribery or crawling under barbed wire. Russian boys and girls on foot from all the outskirts of Berlin flocked to the temple on Easter night - these were crowds that were unthinkable to stop. But they also attended other services. The Nazis were against this. They called Metropolitan Seraphim (Lade) of Berlin and Germany and said that these Orthodox churches were intended for Russian emigrants and demanded that unsuitable people not be allowed there. He was told that he had to assign people to check the documents. Vladyka Seraphim was a calm man (he was a German-Saxon who converted to Orthodoxy out of conviction, studied at the St. Petersburg Seminary, and became a monk after the death of his wife). After listening to the reproaches and demands of the Nazis, he said something like this: “I understand your concerns, these are state considerations. But the shepherd is obliged to call people to church and cannot drive them away from it. The state has its own goals and its own means. There is a police force. If you think that people should be prevented from coming to church, the doors of which, as a pastor, I must keep open, then you can put policemen at the entrance, let them check documents.” The police were never deployed. And the believing people continued to go to temples.

M. V. Shkarovsky describes what the aspirations of our diocese were. But they were often slowed down by the Nazis. Nevertheless, books were printed: Breviaries, Gospels, Prayer Books - in huge editions; they stamped crosses for distribution and distribution, because then people were baptized en masse.

This is how the merger of two emigrations took place: Russian people, deprived of God in the USSR, returned to faith.

– Are you talking about what happened during the war?

– Yes, it was during the war that there was this spiritual upsurge. Moreover, it is interesting that Metropolitan Seraphim noticed at the very beginning of the war, the following letter of his has been preserved: “I am ready to close the churches here so that all my priests who want and are able can be sent to Russia, because we must work there now, they are needed there.” The Synod supported this approach, and indeed in our synodal archive there are lists of priests who were ready to go to the East, to Russia, who submitted a petition for this. But things turned out completely differently: in Germany itself there were a huge number of people in need of spiritual nourishment. At the same time, in Russia, as soon as the Germans arrived, people began to open churches. The Nazis forbade the German military to support religious revival in Russia, and Russian emigrants from traveling to the occupied regions. Our people often circumvented these prohibitions, and many Germans favored the opening of churches. Thousands of churches were opened in this way in the shortest possible time; there are documents about this, evidenced by the Soviet government itself. The Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, for example, reporting in 1949, about (quote verbatim, including parentheses). When Soviet power returned, it began to close these churches. By the way, from such a report it is clear that out of 101 monasteries (as of 1945), 16 were liquidated by 1947...

Of course, some of the church-active people in Russia later found their way to Germany in different ways in the second half of the war, but the majority were those who gradually came to faith in a foreign land. These were people who longed for faith in God. This was the flock with which it was necessary to work during the war, and this work of the shepherds continued after the war. Then bishops and priests from Belarus and Ukraine arrived in Germany. These were not autocephalists, who organized themselves separately, but priests of the so-called Ukrainian Autonomous Church, who rejected separatism.

Out of necessity, bishops and priests of the first emigration wrote false records for people who found themselves in danger due to repatriation commissions and propagandists who said that the NKVD had been disbanded, that “the Motherland has forgiven” and other stories. Metrics were needed to show that the person was supposedly an old emigrant, born either in Yugoslavia, or in Manchuria, or in Poland, but most importantly, he had never lived on Soviet territory. Vladyka, and then archimandrite, Nathanael (Lvov) saved the whole camp: in one night they registered everyone as Poles - and they could not be taken away. Another bishop of the old emigrants, also then still an archimandrite, Vladyka Vitaly (Ustinov), did a lot in this regard. There were people who were saved this way (among them my father, who received the metric of the Harbin Church), but there were many others hiding anywhere: in the forests, mountains, in some attics, among German peasants... One way or another, this time is over, they stopped fishing, and life went on.

In Munich after the war there were 14 parishes, mostly barracks, in camps. There, as they were called then, DPs (displaced persons) were gathered there. They soon came under the protection of the refugee organization UNRRA. For them, also with the help of the Church, a move was organized: to Argentina (it expressed its readiness to accept, it seems, three hundred thousand), Canada, Australia, and the USA. Those who remained in Germany were those who either did not want to leave, believing that they needed to be closer to Russia, or those who worked for two or three years in the Belgian coal mines and acquired pulmonary diseases, or those married to Germans or German women - such that was also enough. This was the post-war flock of the German diocese.

In Amberg, a wartime barrack still stands under monument protection. It does not belong to us, as I said, but we serve there. Or a stone barracks in a camp in Erlangen, Northern Bavaria, where I began my ministry.

– Tell me, how did you grow up, what church were you brought up in?

– At the barracks church in Frankfurt. One craftsman, using an ax, built from some old parts of the barracks a refectory, a central temple, an octagonal drum, and - at the top - a dome with a cross. It was a wonderful church! Church of the Resurrection of Christ, painted white, with a green roof and dome. At first my parents took me with them, and I grew up there. There were grandmothers in the church who told us when we could sit down near the canon where the dead were commemorated. Sitting on this little step, I looked around. I remember there was a skull back there, at the foot of the crucifix, which really interested me. I was about 3–4 years old. I remember the clouds of incense that rise in the slanting rays of the sun, as Dostoevsky describes it, from childhood. Such beauty!

We played with the boys during services. We ran out into the street, and then Alexey Alekseevich came out and said: “Boys! Now I Believe! Come to the temple! This time spent on the street seemed quite long to me. Now I understand that we practically ran out only for the litany, because from the beginning of “I Believe” to the end of the Eucharistic canon and “It is Worthy to Eat,” we stood in the church, then for the litany we ran out again, and then, for the “Our Father” ", we were invited inside again. And we stood firm. Before communion. And when our priest preached, we again “legally” drove “around the bush.” But what communication we had!

From this personal experience, I concluded that children do not have to stand still throughout the service; they can run around the church, as long as they don’t shout too loudly. But we must be able to stand with composure at the main moments of the service. And children need to know that this is important.

The liturgy in the meadow near the forest will remain unforgettable in your memory. As now, scouts have liturgies in camps. The throne and so on were built by the senior scouts. I was about 11 or 12 years old. At the beginning of the liturgy, the thought came to me: to stand for the entire service without moving. This was also a very useful experience for me.

Then I went to our wooden church on my own, on a bicycle. And in the mid-1960s, a stone church of St. Nicholas in the Pskov style was built in Frankfurt. In the old church we only rang one bell. As a boy, I was, of course, amazed at how the elder pulled the rope. And a new temple was already being built with a belfry. The bells were purchased in Mechelen, Belgium, in French the city is called Malines - this is where the expression “raspberry ringing” comes from. More recently, this temple was greatly expanded - the flock has become much larger in recent years.

– But now, please, tell us about the interim period of life of the emigration in Germany.

– The so-called third emigration from the point of view of the church, as well as the “one and a half” emigration, cannot be considered a real stage. Then we had a few parishioners. Basically, it was dissident and Jewish emigration. Compared to today, there was no noticeable replenishment. But still, given our not so large number, it had an effect. Not only individuals, but also families appeared. The church life we ​​lived had something family at its core. For example, the Erastov family - a mother and several children, mostly girls. They joined the Lesna Monastery in France. Son Andrei is now an icon painter in Jordanville, and his mother is also a nun. In addition, some bright personalities appeared. Including Yulia Voznesenskaya, now known in Russia for her books, who came then, in the early 1980s, in connection with the dissident Leningrad group “Maria”. There was already a kind of religious background here - Tatyana Goricheva, Tatyana Belyaeva... The latter was actively involved in our Munich church life. And one of her sons is now a novice in the Munich monastery of St. Job of Pochaev. Mikhail Nazarov appeared with us a little earlier; he was a refugee. I went to church in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, and baptized my children there. Solzhenitsyn, Maksimov, Galich came... There were also those whom we initially called “Soviet wives,” that is, the wives of German specialists who worked in the USSR. In some percentage, they joined our parishes and became simply parishioners, and sometimes even the support of this or that parish. All this was support and a very interesting new experience abroad. But this was not a mass phenomenon.

A real big new wave, not so much emigration as immigration, has arrived in Germany since the early 1990s. These are “Russian Germans” (mixed families), and they were joined by the so-called “contingent” - a new wave of Jews leaving Russia.

– You said that Jews had left before...

– Yes, but they, in theory, were heading through Austria from the USSR to Israel. However, later they shied away: some went to Germany, some to the USA, and some even got a job at an American radio station in Germany; there was such an option.

And in the 1990s, a different picture of emigration began to emerge. Germany itself announced a program, the purpose of which is to restore Jewry in Germany, to raise their numbers to the level that preceded the seizure of power by the Nazis. This was a political decision, partly based on information about allegedly growing anti-Semitism in the former Soviet republics. Germany is creating conditions so that Jews have the opportunity to come. And financial resources were released so that they could live and develop in Germany.

But it turned out interesting, because those who arrived turned out to be not exactly what they expected: these completely Soviet people cannot be compared with German Jewry of the 20s and 30s in any respect. Naturally, they live with completely different ideas, a different life, and some behave in a very unique way. German-Jewish old-timers began to complain that, firstly, those who arrived were not at all interested in the synagogue, and, on the other hand, if they became interested, they entered there and looked after their interests so clearly that either the entire synagogue was taken over by them, or something happened. split.

But this is in the synagogue. As for the Church, many Jews who left are in mixed marriages or are themselves baptized. Sometimes those who have been baptized arrive before leaving. This can be explained in different ways. There are also purely religious reasons that bring these people to the Church. It happens that some sense of cultural involvement in the Russian spirit brings a person to the temple. They are intellectuals and rarely come to Church.

There is one more point. National Jewish identity is confirmed by the rabbinate. If I'm not mistaken, even twice - both there and here. Moreover, when it became clear that the replenishment of synagogues was lame, in some places (fortunately, not everywhere) a question appeared on the forms about whether the person professed “another religion.” Thus, the Orthodox Jew is faced with the question: should he lie or not, should he renounce Orthodoxy? But the whole family is already planning to leave, where can you go? There were two cases when purebred Jews, but at the same time Orthodox priests, were denied a visa, but their wife and children were accepted!

This raises a significant question about which I had to talk with government officials. Is this discrimination, and on what grounds – religious or national? The Germans have no answer to this. And the problem is serious. But be that as it may, those who arrived take a closer look and sometimes find that their Russianness outweighs them. Then they draw the appropriate conclusions. The Jewish community in Germany, of course, does not favor these conclusions, but we do not recognize discrimination - neither religious nor national - and therefore not only Orthodox relatives, but also Jews who have emigrated themselves come to our churches. In general, this phenomenon is not numerous from the point of view of the church. This has a much greater impact in the modern Russian-speaking environment in Germany at the cultural level: Russian-Jewish publications, Russian-Jewish kindergartens and schools are appearing. People from the former Soviet Union who find themselves in Germany for various reasons are also drawn here, regardless of their nationality, who do not have Russian spiritual roots, and are alienated from the Russian spiritual soil. This is our modernity. It seems to me that in modern Russian society there are many such people, and this also affects emigration.

In addition to people who took advantage of the opening of borders, a large number of our new parishioners are “Russian Germans.” These are people who, under other circumstances, would have stayed or returned to Russia. But, unfortunately, there has been no place for them there in the last fifteen years. These families had the opportunity to leave for Germany from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other places. Quite often they were not church members in Russia, even if they were baptized. Quite a few came to Germany who were baptized in a Russian church only due to the lack of Catholic or Evangelical churches. There are people who were not only baptized, but also married in a Russian church, and then, having arrived in Munich or Hamburg, they declare to their wife and children: “Then it was like that there, out of necessity, but now it will be the other way around!” You will go with me to my church here,” this means to the church, or kirk, or to Baptist meetings. For real Orthodox people, this turns into a tragedy, but, as has been said, many people themselves think similarly and calmly follow this path. “We moved, so be it!” I carefully observe how the majority of people who have left live and breathe. These are simple “Soviet people” (not in a negative sense). They have long been rootless. They may be Russian, but without their own history. Their Russianness is rudimentary. And now they are looking for their way in a new, unusual situation.

What are they, spiritually groundless, doing in Germany with their faith? Baptized, maybe even married... Some relatives or someone else tells them: “You understand, everyone there is Catholic.” Or vice versa: “All evangelicals.” So they then tell me: “We signed up to be evangelicals.” - "Why?" “We were told that in Bavaria everyone is evangelical.” Who said? It's wild! Bavaria is the most Catholic of all German states.

But here is another, even more interesting (and not the only) case. “They asked us what faith we were, and we didn’t know how to answer, but we believe in the Gospel, so we wrote: evangelicals. We were offered only two options."

There are anecdotal cases. The Russian Church is “R” – “Russisсh”, “К” – “Kirсhe”, as a result – “RK”. The German official registering the family asks: “What faith are you?” They say: “Russische Kirche”, they say, we belong to the Russian Church. So he writes in the religion column: “RK”. But in Germany there is a concordat and there is a church tax, according to which 9% of the taxes withdrawn are allocated by the state to the religious organization to which the taxpayer is affiliated. Only the traditional German Churches - Catholic and Evangelical - have such an agreement with the state. True, we Orthodox were once offered the same thing, but the Orthodox - Greeks, Russians, Serbs and others - did not want to. They all felt that contributions should be voluntary. What happens? These unfortunate people came to a foreign country, they don’t know anything, they haven’t figured it out, they even testify to their Orthodoxy, but still it turns out “RK”, and the state has been sending money from honest Orthodox taxpayers to Catholic accounts in Germany for years. We even published an information leaflet on this issue. I advise all “Orthodox baptized” people to confirm their Orthodoxy by confession and communion. Then new parishioners, on the basis of papers received from our parishes, are registered as Orthodox at the mayor's office.

But a formal return for the sake of a tick before the word “Orthodox” is not what is required; real Orthodoxy must be cultivated. And this is difficult. These cases, of course, are not a shameful renunciation of faith. People simply don’t know anything, and that’s why it happens to them unwittingly. But things come closer to renunciation where the general spirit is such, the attitude is this: if you come to a foreign country, you have to adapt. Adaptability—it terrifies me. And it, quite naturally, corrupts youth who have no roots. Then the parents grab their heads: what are the young people doing?! So we have big problems with young people.

Hierodeacon Ignatius (Shestakov) talked with Father Nikolai Artemov

To be continued…

Used materials

• Newspaper “New Word”, June 1938
• Dictionary: “Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf from A to Z” on the website Berlin.de (German)

[1] Velimirovich M. M., Zvereva S. G., Gardner Ivan Alekseevich - “Orthodox Encyclopedia”, T. 10, p. 416 - 418:

[2] Alexander Alekseevich Kornilov, “Ascetics of the Persecuted Church: Kiev Archpriest Adrian Rymarenko”, Yakov Krotov Library website: , with reference to the source - the report of the 2001 Karlovac conference.

[3] Alexander Alekseevich Kornilov, “Ascetics of the Persecuted Church: Kiev Archpriest Adrian Rymarenko”, Yakov Krotov Library website: , with reference to the source - report of the 2001 Karlovac conference.

[4] Kornilov A.A., Decree. op.