From humanitarian aid to full-fledged cooperation: 30 years of partnership between the Tambov diocese and the Evangelical Church District of Wetzlar (Germany)

The article studies history of interrelations between the Tambov diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Evangelical Church District of Wetzlar (Germany) and systematizes knowledge about various areas of the cooperation. The study is based on a set of sources of different kinds of affiliation, deposited in the archive of the “Osteuropa Ausschuss” (Committee for Eastern Europe) and covering the period of time from the late 1980s to the beginning of the 2000s. The relevance of the work is determined by the ever-increasing interest in the problems of inter-church interaction and cooperation in various fields including scientific, humanitarian, etc. The main methodological approaches used in the article were the content analysis of historical documents and the synthesis of the data obtained to build a complete and consistent history of cooperation between the Evangelical District of Wetzlar and the Tambov Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to the study, the driving force behind the establishment of contacts and the development of cooperation were the spouses Ernst Udo and Ursula Kiippers from the German side and Archbishop Evgeny (Zhdan), the administrator of the Tambov and Michurinsk diocese, from the Russian side. The basis of cooperation between Tambov and Wetzlar were several transportations of humanitarian aid in 1991-2001: 24 trucks worth 5.8 million German marks were sent to Tambov and some other cities. Further cooperation which was quite formalized, including institutional cooperation, was realized in the implementation of humanitarian, cultural and public initiatives: financial assistance in the restoration and detailing of the Kazan and Ascension monasteries in Tambov, joint musical concerts, the establishment of the Goethe Society in Tambov, the organization of summer youth camps, lectures etc.