1.
Katholikon
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A katholikon or catholicon or sobor refers to one of three things in the Eastern Orthodox Church, The cathedral of a diocese. The major church building of a monastery corresponding to a church in Western Christianity. A large church in a city at all the faithful of the city gather to celebrate certain important feasts rather than go to their local parish church. The name derives from the fact that it is the largest church where all gather together to celebrate the major feast days of the liturgical year. In Russia, it is common for a katholikon to have a church in the basement which can be more easily heated in the winter. A katholikon may have special features in it, such as a kathedra. The word katholikon is often translated into English as cathedral rather than assembly, however an Eastern Orthodox diocese may have several katholikons, only one of which is the bishops cathedral, other important churches being known as katholicons. The rector of churches is usually an archpriest
2.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
3.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
4.
Russian Orthodox Church
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The Russian Orthodox Church, alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches, in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox patriarchates. The Primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus and it also exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the autonomous Church of Japan and the Orthodox Christians resident in the Peoples Republic of China. The ROC branches in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Ukraine since the 1990s enjoy various degrees of self-government, in Ukraine, ROC has tensions with schismatic groups supported by the current government, while it enjoys the position of numerically dominant religious organisation. The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, headquartered in New York, New York, the two Churches reconciled on May 17,2007, the ROCOR is now a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to one of the legends, Andrew reached the location of Kiev. The spot where he erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrews Cathedral. By the end of the first millennium AD, eastern Slavic lands started to come under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, by the mid-10th century, there was already a Christian community among Kievan nobility, under the leadership of Byzantine Greek priests, although paganism remained the dominant religion. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus′ to convert to Christianity and her grandson, Vladimir of Kiev, made Rus officially a Christian state. The Kievan church was a metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ecumenical patriarch appointed the metropolitan, who usually was a Greek. The Metropolitans residence was located in Kiev itself, the capital of the medieval Rus state. Following the tribulations of the Mongol invasion, the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival, despite the politically motivated murders of Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver, the Mongols were generally tolerant and even granted tax exemption to the Church. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, the Trinity monastery founded by Sergius of Radonezh became the setting for the flourishing of spiritual art, exemplified by the work of Andrey Rublev, among others. The followers of Sergius founded four hundred monasteries, thus extending the geographical extent of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. However, the Moscow Prince Vasili II rejected the act of the Council of Florence brought to Moscow by Isidore in March 1441, Isidore was in the same year removed from his position as an apostate and expelled from Moscow. The Russian metropolitanate remained effectively vacant for the few years due largely to the dominance of Uniates in Constantinople then. In December 1448, Jonas, a Russian bishop, was installed by the Council of Russian bishops in Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia without the consent from Constantinople. Subsequently, there developed a theory in Moscow that saw Moscow as the Third Rome, the successor to Constantinople
5.
Mendeleyevo Microdistrict
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Mendeleyevo is part of the Tsentralny District in Kaliningrad, Russia. Until 1947, it was known by its German name Juditten as first a suburb of and then a quarter of Königsberg, Juditten Church was a site of pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. The philosopher Johann Christoph Gottsched was born in Juditten in 1700, the estate was first documented ca.1287 as duas villas sic nominatas Gaudityn near Königsberg. The name was derived from the Old Prussian words gaudis and juodas, separately, Eugen Reichel, a historian of Gottsched, attributed the name to a converted Sudovian chieftain known as Gedete who had relocated to Sambia. The site was documented in 1349 as super villam Gauditin, Gauditen, in 1670 it was mentioned by its modern German name, Juditten, in ducal documents. In 1947 Juditten was renamed Mendeleyevo in Russian, founded in 1288, the fortified Juditten Church was one of the oldest churches of Samland and included within the state of the Teutonic Order. The estate of Juditten developed nearby and it was included within the Duchy of Prussia in 1525 and the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. Juditten was made part of East Prussia in 1773, in 1760 the estate was purchased by the wine merchant Balthasar Schindelmeißer, a member of Königsberg Castles Blutgericht tavern after 1805. In 1808 his successor Richter Schindelmeißer hosted King Frederick William III, in 1814 Richter named the estate Luisenthal to honor Louise, while a fort constructed in 1855 received the name Königin Luise. Juditten developed into a garden suburb, the conservation of the parish copse was due to the efforts of the Königsberg city councillor Theodor Krohne. The copse was later known as the Theodor-Krohne-Wäldchen, the Amtsbezirk Juditten, administered from Ratshof, was created north and west of Königsberg in 1874. It included Juditten proper, Lawsken, Moditten, Spittelhof, Waldthal, the estates Charlottenburg, Friedrichswalde, Groß Rathshof, Klein Rathshof, Moditten, and the Juditten mill. The fort VI Königin Luise, named in 1894, was built near Juditten as part of the new Königsberg fortifications constructed from 1872-94, at the beginning of the 20th century the village was developed into a villa suburb by the private company Villenkolonie Juditten. On 16 June 1927 Juditten was merged into the district of Königsberg. Gottschedstraße and the town square Gottschedplatz honored native son Johann Christoph Gottsched, peterweg honored Peter, the painter who created the frescoes in the church. Lovis-Corinth-Straße was named after the painter Lovis Corinth, Juditten was largely unscathed during World War II. Its inhabitants either fled or were expelled westward. The village was included within the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, lexikon der Stadt Königsberg Pr. und Umgebung
6.
Kaliningrad
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Kaliningrad is a seaport city and the administrative center of Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea. In the Middle Ages, the locality was the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement, the town was successively part of the monastic State of the Teutonic Order, enfeoffed to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, then part of Prussia and Germany. The city was damaged during World War II. Its ruins were occupied by the Red Army on 9 April 1945 and it was renamed Kaliningrad on July 4,1946, in honor of Soviet luminary Mikhail Kalinin, who died in the previous month. In 2005 the city marked 750 years of existence as Königsberg/Kaliningrad, according to the 2010 Census, its population was 431,902 – an increase from 430,003 recorded in the 2002 Census. Kaliningrad is at the mouth of the navigable Pregolya River, which empties into the Vistula Lagoon, Sea vessels can access Gdańsk Bay/Bay of Danzig and the Baltic Sea by way of the Vistula Lagoon and the Strait of Baltiysk. Until around 1900, ships drawing more than 2 meters of water could not pass the bar and come into town, larger vessels had to anchor at Pillau, where cargo was transferred to smaller vessels. In 1901 a ship canal between Königsberg and Pillau, completed at a cost of 13 million German marks, enabled vessels of a 6.5 meters draught to moor alongside the town. Khrabrovo Airport,24 kilometers north of Kaliningrad, has a few scheduled, there is the smaller Kaliningrad Devau Airport for general aviation. Kaliningrad is also home to Kaliningrad Chkalovsk naval air base, Königsberg was preceded by a Sambian fort called Twangste, meaning Oak Forest. During the conquest of the Sambians by the Teutonic Knights in 1255, the declining Old Prussian culture finally became extinct around the 17th century, after the surviving Old Prussians were integrated through assimilation and Germanization. Kaliningrad was the East Prussian provincial capital Königsberg, founded in 1255 by the Teutonic Knights, the city was named in honor of the Bohemian King Ottokar II. Through immigration and development over the seven centuries, the area became predominantly German, though having Polish. During World War II the city of Königsberg was heavily damaged by a British bombing attack in 1944, the President of the United States and the British Prime Minister have declared that they will support the proposal of the Conference at the forthcoming peace settlement. Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 after the death of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mikhail Kalinin, the survivors of the German population were forcibly expelled in 1946-1949, and the city was repopulated with Soviet citizens. The German language was replaced by the Russian language, the city was rebuilt, and, as the westernmost territory of the USSR, the Kaliningrad Oblast became a strategically important area during the Cold War. The Soviet Baltic Fleet was headquartered in the city in the 1950s, because of its strategic importance, Kaliningrad was closed to foreign visitors. In 1957 an agreement was signed and later came into force which delimited the border between Poland and the Soviet Union, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Kaliningrad Oblast became an exclave, geographically separated from the rest of Russia
7.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
8.
Prussian Union of Churches
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Although not the first of its kind, the Prussian Union was the first to occur in a major German state. It became the biggest independent religious organisation in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany, the church underwent two schisms, due to changes in governments and their policies. After being the state church of Prussia in the 19th century, it suffered interference and oppression at several times in the 20th century. In the course of the Second World War, Church property was damaged or destroyed by strategic bombing. After the war, complete ecclesiastical provinces vanished following the flight, the two post-war periods saw major reforms from within the Church, strengthening the parishioners democratic participation. In the early 1950s the Church body was transformed into an umbrella, following the decline in number of parishioners due to the German demographic crisis and growing irreligion, the Church was subsumed into the Union of Evangelical Churches in 2003. The many changes in the Church throughout its history are reflected in its name changes. 20 November 1934 –1945, The Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, thus, two church bodies–one Nazi-recognised and one gradually driven underground–each claimed to represent the true church. 1945–1953, The Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union partially cleansed its leading bodies from German Christians and appointed Nazi opponents, 1953–2003 Evangelical Church of the Union, an independent ecclesiastical umbrella among other recognised Protestant umbrellas and church bodies. 2004 The Evangelical Church of the Union merged in the Union of Evangelical Churches and their descendants made up the bulk of the Calvinists in Brandenburg. At issue over many decades was how to unite into one church, the king, a Reformed Christian, lived in a denominationally mixed marriage with the Lutheran Queen Louise, which is why they never partook of the Lords Supper together. A commission was formed in order to prepare this common agenda, Major reforms to the administration of Prussia were undertaken after the defeat by Napoléons army at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt. In 1808 the Reformed Friedrich Schleiermacher, pastor of Trinity Church, issued his ideas for a reform of the Protestant Churches. This differed from the old structure in that the new leadership administered the affairs of all faiths, Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, Mennonites, Moravians, and the Calvinists. In 1814 the Principality of Neuchâtel had been restituted to the Berlin-based Hohenzollern, in 1815 Frederick William III agreed that this French-speaking territory of his joined the Swiss Confederation as Canton of Neuchâtel. Furthermore, no Lutheran congregation existed in Neuchâtel, thus the Reformed Church of Neuchâtel Canton was not an object of Frederick Williams Union policy. In January 1817 the cult and public instruction section was hived off as the Prussian Ministry of the Spiritual, Educational and Medical Affairs, Karl vom Stein zum Altenstein was appointed as minister. The Reformed churches and the Lutheran church were administered by one department within the same ministry
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