My Journey with Father Alexander: What happiness it all has been!

By Juliana Schmemann

One of the towering figures in the Orthodox Church in the 20th century was the Russian-American priest, Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann, former Dean of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, an eminent theologian,liturgiologist, teacher, and author. His beloved wife, Matushka Juliana Schmemann, offers us a beautiful account of her life's journey with Father Alexander, from Talinn in Estonia and Baden-Baden in Germany, to Paris, New York, and Lac Labelle in Quebec. She is also the translator and editor of Fr. Alexander's personal journal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Press
• Release date: Oct 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9791220856638

Book preview

✢ PUBLISHER’S NOTE ✢

As the publisher of Alexander Press, it gives me great joy and pleasure to present the fourth volume in our series Orthodoxy in Dialogue with the Modern World, the memoirs of Juliana Schmemann, My Journey with Father Alexander.

Matushka Juliana Schmemann, the beloved wife of the late Father Alexander Schmemann offers to us a beautiful account of her life’s journey with Father Alexander, from Talinn in Estonia and Baden-Baden in Germany, to Paris, New York and Lac Labelle in Quebec.

What happiness it all has been!

And what a privilege to follow their great journey, to once again give thanks to God, who planted such beautiful flowers in His garden for all of us to cherish . . .

It reinforces, once again, my conviction that the best way to contribute to Orthodoxy’s dialogue with the world is by the discrete witness of the lives of His people, in particular, by reference to that portion of their lives which, through His light and grace, become life in Christ, an endless eucharist for the life of the World.

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This series is being published by Alexander Press to present notable works by contemporary writers that contribute to the ongoing dialogue of Orthodoxy with the modern world.

Dr. John Hadjinicolaou

Montréal, October 2006

Postscript, September 2007:

Matushka Schmemann’s account of her journey with Father Schmemann has been so welcomed that we need to reprint it now, attesting to the inspiration of her witness.

—J.H.

✢ PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION ✢

As a second edition of these personal memoirs is being prepared, I realize that my readers were not only interested in the story of our life together, but loved what filled that life – its happiness and its lasting joy.

We were ordinary, normal people with difficult times, as well as easier times. But as I relive our life in all its details and try to look at it from some perspective, I can only witness with enormous gratitude, that our life was always, somehow automatically, centered on: Thy will be done! and it gave it harmony and light. It was not a heroic decision nor the result of rational thinking, it just was – and this obedience, freely chosen, was filled with trust, hope and certitude that God loves us.

What can I say?

Only: Thank You, Lord.

Thank You for the beauty and peace of this month of September in Labelle, Canada, where I am closer than ever to my husband, to nature, to the glory of creation, to the feeling that my remainig days are full of Grace.

I hope that I am true to my husband’s vision of life:

One thing is needed. . . .

Juliana Schmemann

Montreal, September 2007

With Father Alexander the day after Father Alexander’s cancer diagnosis, October 1982, Crestwood, N.Y.

✢ PROLOGUE ✢

My children tease me that I am a stickler for having things done instantly, preferably yesterday.

Given more time, I might have done a better job of remembering but I want you, my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, relatives and friends to read these memories while I am still with you.

When you are as old as I am and think that you might be taken suddenly, you do not want to be caught with an unfinished task.

I look on each day as a blessing. Each morning I feel lucky to have yet another day to live. At my age, my body is playing up, but I am luckier than many.

I love living.

Juliana Schmemann

Montreal, June 2006

With our children at Lac Labelle, summer 2006:

Masha, Anya, Serge

✢ TALLINN, ESTONIA ✢

Why Estonia?

The First World War was ending, the revolution and civil war were raging across Russia. The whole White Army was being pushed south by the Red Army. Total chaos reigned.

Dimitri Schmemann in St. Petersburg. 1912.

When the war began, Dimitri Nikolaevitch Schmemann, one of eight children of Senator Nikolai Schmemann, a senior government official and member of the council of state, was studying at St. Petersburg University, pursuing a law degree and preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. Senator Schmemann was a brilliant and knowledgeable law maker. His was a country at war and the senator was working on devising reforms that would insure fair and adequate free trade for a stronger united government. By so doing he was hoping to forestall the inevitable and avoid the rebellion brewing all over Russia.

When the war with Germany began, the senator’s son, Dimitri Schmemann, along with many of his contemporaries, left university and enrolled in an accelerated officer training program, the Corps of Pages [Pageski Korpus]. He was accepted into a prominent infantry regiment, the Semyonovsky Guards, whose chief was the Emperor Nicholas II himself. Two of his future wife’s brothers, Nikolai and Tikhon Shishkov, were in the same regiment and all went to war. Dimitri, along with Tikhon Shishkov, was seriously wounded during one of the battles. The older brother, Nikolai, was killed in the same battle. Dimitri remembered running by the brother who was wounded and thinking, Thank God one of us will survive! Then he himself collapsed from his own head wound. The two wounded men were rescued from the field of battle and sent back to St. Petersburg. Dimitri’s sad task was to visit the Shishkov family to tell them what he knew of their older son’s last day.

Anna Shishkova and her brothers during the First World War

Dimitri’s head was bandaged, he looked like a hero, his prominent ears were flattened under the bandages. Family legend has it that beautiful Anna Shishkova, the daughter of the family, could not resist him. They fell in love, were engaged and got married on September 25, 1918, all in a very short space of time. This was a frequent occurrence in war-time. Dimitri left almost immediately to rejoin his regiment. The chaos of the war-spawned revolution caused an eruption of violence that had been foreseen by many and sadly ignored by the establishment. After years of terrible bloodshed on the Northwestern Front, the Semyonovsky Regiment was pulled back to St. Petersburg. The regiment was assigned to defend the city from the White Army which was challenging the Bolsheviks. Instead of defending the city, Dimitri and many other former guards officers joined the White Army which came within sight of the Old Imperial capital but was driven back and eventually disbanded in Estonia, which had become independent.

Anna and Dimitri were separated for about a year and a half. During that time, in St. Petersburg (now named Leningrad), Anna, gave birth to a little girl Elena on August 12, 1919, and moved in with her in-laws in a city governed, first by a provisional government, then by the Reds. Life was extremely hard: no money, no income, no food. Years later, when I was already the wife of her son Alexander, Anna told me many stories about those difficult times: selling precious jewels, sewing other gems under the belts of garments, bribing people to obtain false identity papers, passports, etc. Finally all these efforts allowed them to flee St. Petersburg, and to move to Estonia. The Senator, Nikolai Schmemann, his wife, his five daughters (Lina, Olga, Marousia, Natasha and Vera) joined Anna and her daughter on the road to Tallinn, Estonia. This was made possible with the help of an official clerk who had known the Schmemann family and was able to help arrange their escape. It was thanks to the smuggled family jewelry that they were able to pay their voyage, to find a place to live and to look for work.

Dimitri’s brother Sergei, a naval officer in the Crimean fleet had died in a military hospital from a mysterious blood ailment. His other brother Andrei had left St. Petersburg with wife and child and settled in Hungary where he lived many years as a refugee. Meanwhile, in Tallinn, in the midst of a daily struggle for survival, a life filled with fear and an uncertain future, Anna’s little girl Elena had grown into a healthy eighteen-month-old with beautiful bronze hair and huge blue eyes.

Then . . . a miracle! One day, as in a fairy tale, like thunder out of a clear blue sky, Dimitri appeared! He was thin, exhausted, the bandages gone exposing his prominent unforgettable ears. His regiment had disbanded completely, leaving every man to fend for himself. Dimitri had heard that his family had left St. Petersburg and had gone to Tallinn. He followed them there and found his family! His daughter, by then a one and a half year old, was presented to him and she screamed in total terror. It took quite a while for her to get used to this new stranger in her life.

Alexander and Andrei, 1925

Throughout all his struggles, Dimitri had remained a gentleman, that same charming gentleman whom I knew and loved many years later as his daughter-in-law. Dimitri was quite an accomplished musician. In fact, besides fighting as a soldier, the only thing that he really knew well was how to play the violin. One can only imagine the state of mind of these uprooted young veterans; exiled from their home to a strange country, living a surreal existence. While the women were kept busy keeping their families fed and providing for them the most basic of human needs, the men had no such role to fill their days. Dimitri was hired by a night-club to play in their orchestra. He spent many hours there, drowning his memories of a lost land, lost friends and the loss of a way of life while providing for his family.

Anna was pregnant again. And soon . . . the twins arrived! Andrei and Alexander.

I often heard my