Alexander Men
Alexander Vladimirovich Men (Russian Александр Владимирович Мень, scientific transliteration Vladimirovič Aleksandr Men, born January 20, 1935 in Moscow, † September 9, 1990 in Semchos today to Sergiev Posad, Russia) was a Russian Orthodox priest and philosopher of religion. He is one of the leading Russian Orthodox theologians of the 20th century.
Life
He was born the son of a Jewish textile engineer and an Orthodox mother. Even as a toddler he was baptized. He went to the 554th school for boys in Moscow. In school, he read the works of John Chrysostom, Basileus the Great, Augustine and Theophanes Satwornik, as well as the Philokalia. Self-taught, he learned the substance of a Russian Orthodox seminary.
He studied biology at the Institute for fur products in Balaschicha and later in Irkutsk. Privately, he studied theology and philosophy. He was interested Baruch de Spinoza, René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz but also the Orthodox theologian Pavel Florensky, Alexei Khomyakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, and Sergei Bulgakov.
In Irkutsk, he came into contact with the students of theology and later dissident Gleb Yakunin. 1958 relegated him the Institute of furs, because he had worked several times without permission in church administration. In the same year he was in Moscow to the Orthodox deacon, ordained a few months later and began to study at the seminary in Leningrad. In 1964 he moved to the Theological Academy in Moscow where he received his doctorate with a dissertation on monotheism and pre-Christian religions in 1968.
Men published ten books that have been laid under pseudonym as Tamisdat in Russian language abroad and returned as forbidden literature in the Soviet Union. The most important are the fundamental theological series In Search of the way, the truth and the life ( russian W poiskach Puti, istiny i Schisni, 1970-1983 ), an introduction to Christianity The Son of Man (Russian Syn Tschelowetscheski, 1969) and a treatise on the origin and development of Orthodox celebrations, sacraments, word and image (Russian Tainstwo, Slovo i Obras, 1980).
His view that people are lost without God, made him the hope systemoppositioneller circles, who sought a socialism opposite philosophy of life. In the 1970s and 1980s Men led the congregation in Tarassowka in Moscow where he became active as a missionary. He exercised influence among young people and in the scientific intelligence. In his village church he baptized several thousand people in a spectacular action. He gave the magazine world of the Bible (Russian Mir Biblii ) out, founded in 1989 in Moscow a Free Orthodox University, championed ecumenism.
Men was monitored by the KGB since the 1960s. The Secret Service raided several times and summoned him to his apartment for questioning. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he joined several times on television, won great popularity, but was met with hostility from nationalists and anti-Semites for being Jewish and ecumenical views.
On September 9, 1990, he was killed in the early morning Semchos at Sergiev Posad on the way to church by an assassin with a hatchet. The government set up a commission of inquiry. Results were not presented. The Chairman of the Commission was also killed.
Men was married and had a son and a daughter. The son Mikhail Men was 2005-2013 Governor of Ivanovo.
The Catholic Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg- Stuttgart and the All-Russian Library of Foreign Literature in Moscow confer annually since 1995, the Alexander -Men Award to personalities who have rendered outstanding services to the exchange between Russia and Germany.
Works
- Son of man. Oakwood Publ, Torrance, Calif. 1998, ISBN 1-879038-28-5; German The Son of Man, edited by Klaus Mertes and Ulrike Patow German by Monika Schier horn. Herder, Freiburg; 2, durchges. Edition 2007, ISBN 3451290596
- About Christ and the church. Oakwood Publ, Torrance, Calif. 1996, ISBN 1879038293
- I Biblii. Knižnaja palata, Moskva, 1990, ISBN 5-7000-0329-5
- Smertiiu smert poprav. Eridan, Minsk, 1990, ISBN 5858720013
- Pravoslavnoe bogosluzenie: Tainstvo, slovo i obraz. Slovo, Moskva, 1991, ISBN 5-85050-266-1
- Istoriia religii v semi tomakh: V Puti poiskakh, istiny i Zhizni. Slovo, Moskva 1991-1992, ISBN 5850502815
- Bibliologicheskiĭ slovar. Fond imeni Aleksandra Menia, Moskva 2002, ISBN 5898310207