Saint Alexander Schmorell

Alexander Schmorell (16 September [O.S. 3 September] 1917 – 13 July 1943), also sometimes referred to as Saint Alexander of Munich, was a Russian-German student at Munich University who, with five others, formed a resistance group (part of the Widerstand) known as White Rose (German: Weiße Rose) which was active against the Nazi German regime from June 1942 to February 1943. In 2012, he was glorified as a saint and passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and is venerated by Orthodox Christians throughout the world. Alexander Schmorell was born in Orenburg, Russia, on 16 September [O.S. 3 September] 1917 (Russia still used the Julian calendar when he was born). Schmorell's father was Hugo Schmorell, a German-born physician who was raised in the Russian Empire. Schmorell's mother was Natalia Vedenskaya, a Russian and the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest. Schmorell was baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother died of typhus during the Russian Civil War when he was two years old. In 1920, his widowed father married a German woman, Elisabeth Hoffman, who, like him, was raised in Russia. In 1921 the family fled from Russia and moved to Munich, Weimar Germany, Schmorell was four years old at the time. In Germany, he grew up with his step-siblings Erich Schmorell (born 1921) and Natalie Schmorell (born 1925), as well as his Russian nanny, Feodosiya Lapschina. She took his late mother's place in his upbringing. His nanny never learned how to speak German. Because of this, Alexander Schmorell grew up bilingual, speaking both German and Russian natively. His friends gave him the nickname 'Schurik', a nickname he would be called by his closer friends for the rest of his life. He was an Eastern Orthodox Christian who considered himself both German and Russian. As declared in the Gestapo's interrogations, he was a convinced Tsarist and then an archenemy of the Bolsheviks.