Adamantoff, Paul (Pawel)

Born: June 25, 1871 in Njewerewo
died: September 1, 1960 in Wiesbaden

Pawel Adamantoff was born in Njewerewo, a small town near Nischni-Nowgorod. After studying at the Spiritual Academy in Kazan and the Theological Academy in St. Petersburg, he was transferred to the Russian legation church in Dresden in 1896. Here he married Marie von Waldenburg, born in 1879 to Silesian nobility, in 1905.

In June 1908, Adamantoff and his wife came to Wiesbaden, where he was ordained a deacon and placed at the side of the then Provost Sergius Protopopoff. At the same time, he lectured at the University of Frankfurt and taught Russian children in Wiesbaden. Pawel Adamantoff spent the First World War in England, probably with relatives of his wife, and thus escaped deportation from the German Reich. He returned to Wiesbaden around 1920.

When Provost Protopopoff retired in 1921, Adamantoff was ordained as a priest for the second time and succeeded him. In the interwar period, he played a certain role in the German-Russian aristocracy. In November 1927, he married Princess Viktoria zu Schaumburg-Lippe, sister of the last German emperor, to Alexander Zoubkoff in Bonn, and in April 1938 he married Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia to Grand Duchess Kyra of Russia at Cäcilienhof Palace in Potsdam. Until 1940, Pawel Adamantoff was responsible for all Orthodox believers in the area of the former Rhine Province and Frankfurt.

After the end of the Second World War, Adamantoff's responsibility was limited to Wiesbaden. The Russian community had grown considerably and was the largest of the seven Russian communities in Hesse with around 3,000 believers, mostly refugees - so-called displaced persons. When Archbishop Philotheus was appointed head pastor on June 30, 1946, Adamantoff became his deputy.

The financial situation of the Wiesbaden parish had become very difficult after the end of the war. It was not entitled to church taxes, and income from visits to the Russian Chapel, an important source of income in earlier times, was almost completely lost. In tough negotiations with the Hessian Ministry of Culture, Pawel Adamantoff stood up for the members, some of whom were completely impoverished, and thus earned the devotion of the Russian faithful. Adamantoff's wife died in 1953, and from then on his daughter Anastasia, born in 1920, was an important support for him.

He died after 52 years of service and was buried in the Russian Orthodox cemetery in Wiesbaden with great sympathy from the population. Lord Mayor Georg Buch laid a wreath at the grave, as did a representative of the Hessian Minister of Culture Ernst Schütte and numerous clergymen of all denominations.