Monastery of St. Job of Pochaev (Munich)

The Monastery of St. Job of Pochaev in Munich, Germany was founded in 1946 by refugee monks from Pochaev Lavra after the Bolshevik 1917 take over of Russia.

History

After the Bolshevik forces took control of Russia in late 1917, many clerics and monastics were forced to leave the country. In 1923, Archimandrite Vitaly (Maximenko) of the Pochaev Lavra moved the Lavra's printing equipment to the Carpathian Mountains outside of Russia and founded a Pochaev monastery in exile in Ladomirova, Czechoslovakia, dedicated to St. Job of Pochaev. There, the Monastery of St. Job functioned from 1924 until 1944, furnishing the Russian emigree church with service books and spiritual literature.

As Soviet forces neared the Carpathian monastery in 1944, a large portion of the community of monks left for Germany, then to Switzerland, and finally to Jordanville, New York in the United States of America. Those monks who did not depart for America, along with new novices and monks, gathered around Archimandrite Job in Germany, near Munich.

In the decades after World War II the monastery in Munich went through several phases as the monastic life in Munich declined. With the arrival at the monastery of the Bishop Mark of Munich and Southern Germany in 1981, the monastic community was renewed. Currently the head of the monastery is Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany, who also resides there. The monks manage a variety of obediences including church singing, cleaning, candle-making, and publishing.

Sources

• The Orthodox Monastery in Munich in the Eyes of a Resident
• Monastery of St. Job of Pochaev, Munich, Germany
• Official Homepage (in German)
• Orthpedia entry (in German)