Alexander Schmorell

St. Alexander Schmorell
Born	16 September 1917 Orenburg, Russia
Died	13 July 1943 Munich, Germany
Venerated in	Orthodox Church
Canonized	5 February 2012, Munich, Germany by ROCOR

Saint Alexander Schmorell (16 September 1917 in Orenburg, Russia; – 13 July 1943 in Munich) was one of five Munich University students who formed a resistance group known as White Rose (Weiße Rose) which was active against Germany's Nazi regime from June 1942 to February 1943. In 2012, he was glorified as a Passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

Schmorell's father, a medical doctor, was German-born and raised in Russia. Schmorell's mother was Russian, 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 who, like him, grew up in Russia. They left Russia and moved to Munich, Germany, in 1921, when Schmorell was four years old. His Russian nanny came along with them and she took his late mother's place in his upbringing. Alexander Schmorell grew up bilingual, speaking both German and Russian. 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.

After his Abitur (equivalent to high level High School diploma), he was called into the Reich Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst) and then into the Wehrmacht (German Army during the Nazi era). In 1938, he took part in the annexation of Austria and eventually in the Wehrmacht invasion of Czechoslovakia.

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