Those familiar with the history of Eastern Christianity will be well aware that many of the individuals most passionately interested in this subject are not from Orthodox families or even from families having their roots in those parts of the world historically associated with Orthodoxy. In the Western World, particularly in the United States, Eastern Christianity is attracting amazing numbers of converts. In many Orthodox parishes, the majority of the faithful are from non-Orthodox backgrounds while in some Orthodox jurisdictions the majority of the priests and a significant number of bishops are also of non-Eastern heritage. In addition, many of Eastern Christianity’s most renowned scholars have been westerners, for example, the pre-eminent Eastern liturgist, Fr. Cyril Korolevsky, born François Charon. Indeed, converts to Orthodoxy are even numbered among the saints. St. Elizabeth the New Martyr, older sister of the last Tzarinna of Russia, was a German Lutheran princess prior to her marriage.

My father’s ancestors were German Lutherans. For several generations their home was “Holy Russia.” (This is also true of my wife’s family.) While I always found my grandparent’s Old Country stories fascinating, it was not until I was sixteen that this interest became a real passion. That happened after my great-grandmother’s death when I discovered two Russian documents from 1888 at the bottom of a box of old photographs. One was my great-grandfather’s inscription notice drafting him into the Russian army; the other was his passport or, as this document described itself, “An Edict of His Imperial Majesty, Alexander Alexandrovitch, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, Tzar of Kiev, Vladimir, Novograd, Kazan, Astrakan, of Poland, of Siberia…i prochy, i prochy, i prochy – and so on and so on and so on.”

For the most part, German Lutherans living in Russia were fervent monarchists. This is reflected in an nineteenth-century reprinting of one of the most famous Russian-German Lutheran prayerbooks.  

One of my grandfather’s stories was his grandfather’s recollection of seeing Tzar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna. This took place in Kyiv, the ancient capital of “Rus’” and “Mother of all the Cities of Russia.” According to this story, in the last years of the 1890s the renowned choir from their village was requested to take part in a concert in Kyiv attended by the Imperial family who were, according to my Grandfather, visiting Kyiv on their way to their summer residence in Crimea. In addition to singing in this choir, while in Kyiv this grandfather visited as much of the city as possible. This included the magnificent ancient churches and especially the world-famous Monastery of the Caves. However, he was especially amazed by the number of Russians with blond hair and blue eyes who, as he was told, were the descendents of the ancient Vikings who had founded Kyiv more than a thousand years earlier.

Because many of our relatives lived in the Gostynin district of Poland, (this town is located northwest of Warsaw) they have an especially interesting connection with an earlier period of Russian history. Although during the first decades of the nineteenth century, this district had no resident Lutheran minister, in 1824 the Russian government gave the ruins of a duke’s castle to the local Lutheran people, with the order that the stones from these ruins were to be re-used to build a Lutheran church. The castle’s main tower was the bell tower for the new church, and one of the castle’s walls was used for the church’s east wall. The first pastor, Rev. Karl Pasternacy, was installed in this church on 1 September 1825.

Many legends and traditions were told about this ancient castle, one of the most fascinating going back to the so-called “Time of Troubles” between the reign of Tzar Boris Godunov and the time that the House of Romanov took over the throne of Russia in 1613. One of the monarchs of this horrifyingly unsettled period was crowned in 1606 and named Tzar Vasili IV. A few years later he was betrayed to an invading Polish army who took him to Gostynin and imprisoned him in the local castle. Here, according to the legend, he was tortured until he agreed to become a Roman Catholic monk. He died a short time later. (Incidentally, the initiative of the Archpriest Avvakum Petrovich was largely an effort to counter the tragically confused conditions of this period of Russian history.)

http://www.upstreamvistula.org/Parishes/Gostynin.htm

My wife’s family also has interesting associations with the last Tzar and Tzarinna. During the first months of World War I all Germans living in the vicinity of Russia’s Austrian border were exiled to Siberia. However, when the Tzarist government fell early in 1917, all were allowed to leave Siberia. By the middle of July in 1918, one branch of my wife’s family was attempting to return to their former home. Near the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains they met other refugees who told them that the Bolsheviks were approaching from one direction and the White Army from another. If they couldn't get to the city of Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk under the Communists) they would be caught in the middle of a battlefield. Somehow they did make it to safety and eventually got back to their homes in Volynia. Years later they realized that they were only a couple of hour's walk from where the Imperial family was murdered.

One of my wife’s aunts owned a spoon used by Czar Nicholas. Around the turn of the century this aunt’s father, a Mr. Friedrich Buth, was a soldier in the Russian army serving in a battalion that was reviewed by the Czar. After the inspection, the Czar joined the officers for a meal. When the dinner was over Mr. Buth cleared the table. When he got to the Czar’s place, he picked up the teaspoon Czar Nicholas had used and slipped it into his pocket. It now belongs to his granddaughter.
                                                                                                                    

 There is one picture of our family – or at least part of it - on the Internet, taken in February 2003 when the Patriarch of the Ukrainian Catholic Church visited Canada and Manitoba. Unfortunately, our oldest son Nathan, and our only daughter Rachel, are not in this picture. Patriarch Lubomyr Cardinal Husar is the gentleman with the white beard. I am the one with the grey beard and beside me is my wife, Linda, nee Otto. The two boys are our sons, Karl-Michael and Nicholas. Behind us is a friend of our family, Walter Dudych and (only partially visible) our the Auxiliary Bishop of Winnipeg, Kyr David Motiuk. In this picture we are presenting Patriarch Husar with a bishop’s walking stick that Nicholas and I made for him. (In Ukrainian it is called a "posokh.") By the strangest of co-incidents, His Beatitude had left his own walking stick in Rome and during the first part of his visit here had to use Bishop David’s. (If you look closely you can see Mr. Dudych holding Bishop David's posokh.)  

The Walking Stick 

The golden medal set into the top of this Walking Stick is the official medal commemorating the 1984 Papal Visit to Canada minted by the Lombardo Mint under authorization of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Links to Winnipeg Archeparchy and Kyiv Patriarchal site – text of "Two Patriarchal Guarantees" from Progress. http://www.archeparchy.ca

A Word of Thanks

This is also the place to express my thanks to several people who have made this website possible. At the top of the list is my sister Cheryl Scharf, this site’s Webmaster. Brendan Schacht of Art Book Bindery did much of the scanning. David Everett of David Everett Photography also did some of the scanning and is responsible for creating the homepage photograph and taking the pictures of the posokh. Special thanks to my wife, Linda, and our children, Nathan, Rachel, Karl-Michael and Nicholas who assisted in various ways, especially by their encouragement. Without the assistance and guidance of all these wonderful people this undertaking would have been an impossibility.

◊ Gallery One - A Witness to The Elect
◊ Gallery Two - When the Wall Opens Again - Past Tragedy - Future Glory
◊ Gallery Three - The Saviour and The Gospels: Christ, The Mother of God, and The Cross
◊ Gallery Four - Fathers and Saints of the Universal Church
◊ Gallery Five - Saints and Historians of the Church of Ancient Rus'
◊ Gallery Six - Metropolitans, Confessors and Patriarchs of the Ukrainian and Russian Church
◊ Gallery Seven - Popes and Patriarchs
◊ Gallery Eight - Churches
◊ Gallery Nine - Texts
◊ Gallery Ten - Free Designs