German (Podmoshensky)

After the Communists came to power in Latvia, Gleb's father was arrested as the owner of a stationery store and was exiled to Vorkuta . Only after the fall of the Soviet regime did it become known that in Vorkut he died of starvation.

Around 1942 he moved with his mother to Germany , and then to the United States, where his grandmother, Alexandra Fedorova, the former prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater, lived.

In America, after much suffering and the desire to find his place in life, by the miracle of St. Sergius, who saved him from death, he gained a conscious faith in God.

In 1962 he graduated from Holy Trinity Theological Seminary in Jordanville . He served as a reader in Orthodox churches in the United States.

In 1963, together with his friend Eugene Rose, with the blessing of Archbishop John (Maximovich), he founded the United German Orthodox Brotherhood in the USA, which was actively engaged in missionary activity.

In 1962 he painted the icon of the Monk Herman of Alaska , who was not yet officially recognized as a saint.

In March 1964, together with Eugene, he opened the Orthodox Books and Icons shop near the Cathedral in San Francisco , which became the center of Orthodox education. Since 1965, together with Eugene, he was involved in publishing the magazine The Holy Word of The Orthodox Word (The Orthodox Word).

After the death in 1966, Archbishop John (Maximovich), on behalf of the Brotherhood, together with Eugene, collected information about miracles performed at the prayer request of St. John. Subsequently, these notes amounted to the book "Annals of veneration of Blessed John."

In the summer of 1967, Gleb and Eugene were able to buy a plot of land a few miles from the small town of Platinum in Northern California, where the monastery of the Holy German Brotherhood was founded in 1969 (later the monastery was converted into a monastery).

On October 14 (27), 1970, he received monastic tonsure with the name German in honor of the canonized in the same year, German Alaska.

In 1976 he was elevated to the rank of hieromonk .

In 1982, he was mentioned as hegumen, rector of the Holy German Desert in the city of Platinum (pc. California, USA). At the monastery there was a church publishing house. The desert brethren also served two other communities: churches in the name of the Icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary “The Handmaid of the Sinners” in Redding (California, USA) and a chapel in the name of the Kursk-Root Icon of the Sign of the Virgin in Woodbourne (Oregon, USA).

In the 1980s, he participated in the founding of the New Valaam Monastery on the island of Spruce in Alaska . In total, he took part in the creation of seven monasteries throughout America.

With the death of Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), fermentations and troubles began in the monastery. As a result, by the decision of the Spiritual Court of the Western American Diocese of June 16, 1988, Father Superior Herman (Podmoshensky) was deprived of his dignity for violating a number of canonical rules.

Not wanting to acknowledge the deprivation of dignity, together with the inhabitants of Platinum, he resigned from the Russian Church Abroad and was accepted by Pankratius (Vrionios) into the jurisdiction of the noncanonical "Greek Orthodox Missionary Archdiocese of America".

In 1990, he resumed publishing the Russian Pilgrim magazine, which was published in pre-reform spelling , becoming its editor-in-chief.

In 2000, in connection with the scandal, he resigned as abbot of the monastery.

Realizing the abnormality of being in a schism, the brethren of the Holy Germanic Desert began to search for a way to resolve their status. On November 28, 2000, the brethren of the monastery were accepted into fellowship in the Serbian Orthodox Church . The ruling bishop John (Mladenovic) recognized the deprivation of the rank of former hegumen German as legal.

He lived alone in the St. Seraphim monastery near Minneapolis as a simple monk; being seriously ill, he did not stop missionary service, wrote books, worked with materials from the Russian Pilgrim magazine

The last years of his life he lived at rest near the St. German Monastery. For the past ten years, he has suffered from Parkinson's disease and diabetes .

He died in the morning of June 30, 2014 in the city of Minneapolis at the age of eighty.

• German (Podmoshensky) on the site "Russian Orthodoxy"
• Father German (Podmoshensky) - Missionary by the Grace of God
• Archimandrite German (Podmoshensky Gleb Dmitrievich) (born c. 1933)
• Igumen GERMAN (PODMOSHENSKY), CH. EDIT. MAGAZINE “RUSSIAN PILGRIM”. MUSEUMS OF NEW PARTICIPANTS.
• "Children of the martyrdom." In memory of the monk German (Podmoshensky. + June 30, 2014)