Overview

St. George Monastery 90 km from Berlin is the only monastery of the Moscow Patriarchate in Germany. About 10 monks and novices live here, most of them in their early twenties. They conduct church services, build and renovate the monastery, the isolated location of which and the absence of parishioners make the daily life of novices from large cities in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia similar to the practice of early Christian hermits. They have different motives for staying here, and for some, the tranquility of a remote German village also means loneliness and doubt.