For almost fifty years Father Timofei, a former Donbas coal miner, held services in a church he built from debris in a bomb-ravaged suburb of Munich
In a Munich suburb close to the Olympic Stadium, there is a place that city residents describe as a “small garden of Eden” and an “oasis of peace.”
Among neatly swept paths and well‑kept lawns, visitors come upon a small piece of rural Ukraine: a tiny Orthodox church stands by a simple whitewashed clay house or “mazanka” shaded by an apple orchard.
The interior of the church is decorated with icons, colored prints of the Virgin Mary and angels, hand‑embroidered towels and artificial flowers.
It resembles a Ukrainian village church, but most of the visitors are speaking German.
The East and West Peace Church is well known in Munich, as is its 109‑year‑old founder, known affectionately as Vaeterchen Timofei.
“Vaeterchen,” a diminutive of the German word for “father,” is a made‑up word that roughly translates the Russian title for a priest “batyushka.”
Father Timofei probably gets more coverage in the local media than many more prominent celebrities. Newspapers describe him as “the oldest Munich resident,” “a city saint” and Munich’s “symbol of survival.”
Most Germans tend to assume that Timofei is a Russian. But in fact, he is from Ukraine.
Timofei Prokhorov was born in 1894 in a small coal‑mining village in what is now Donetsk Oblast. He went to work in the local mine when he was a boy, and he was still working underground when World War II broke out and Germans occupied the area. Later on in the war, as the advancing Soviet Army drove the Germans out of Ukraine, Prokhorov left his home and headed toward the West.
“I was following the Lord’s inspiration to see another part of the world and preach peace,” Timofei said later.
He walked westward for several months. In the confusion of the war, nobody stopped him. He was accompanied by Natasha, whom Timofei called his helper.
When they reached Munich, the couple stopped to sleep under a bridge on the Isar River. That night, Timofei reported that the Virgin Mary came to him in a vision and said: “Stop here, and build a church. It should unite people, not divide them.”
The couple settled in Oberwiesenfeld, an abandoned district of bombed‑out ruins on the outskirts of the city. They set about building a home for themselves without an architect or any technical assistance. They used boards, bricks and pieces of metal picked from the piles of rubble.
Within a year, they had built a small chapel, and Timofei performed his first service in it. By 1953, the house and church were complete. Timofei called his church the East and West Peace Church.
When people asked him what denomination it was, he would answer: “It is God’s church erected for the friendship of East and West.”
For a long time afterwards, Natasha continued to work on the decoration, by candlelight knitting colorful rugs out of wool from old pullovers. When local residents started attending services at the church, somebody brought in icons and religious pictures.
“We started coming here for walks in 1955, when it was an airfield. And we saw a strange tall man, walking around in his long dress,” Luise Pratt, a regular visitor, recalled. “But he seemed very nice, and soon we began to communicate with him – mostly with smiles. At first he didn’t speak German. Even now, he doesn’t really speak it properly.”
Pratt said that nobody knows if Timofei really is a priest and that it never seemed to matter. The local church authorities didn’t test him.
In the 1970s, the couple found themselves at the center of a minor scandal. The Munich city council was planning to build a stadium for the 1972 Olympic Games. When the construction authorities were surveying the site, they were surprised to come across Timofei’s structures.
An investigation was launched, and authorities were shocked to find that Timofei not only lacked title to the land and planning permission, he didn’t even have a passport or a German visa.
Timofei was surprised as well. It was the first time that anyone had asked him for his papers since 1945.
When the investigators asked who gave him permission to build on land belonging to the city of Munich, Timofei could only reply, “I had a vision, and the Blessed Virgin gave me an order. All the land belongs to God.”
Things might have turned out badly for Timofei and his church. However, the people of Munich rallied to his support. A newspaper, Abendzeitung, launched a mass campaign, and city authorities eventually agreed not to take any further action.
During the Olympics, the couple sold flowers and apples from their garden.
The following year, Munich’s new celebrities were married. Timofei was 80, and Natasha was 76.
“After 26 years, the ‘wild’ couple legitimized their relationship,” Abendzeitung wrote.
Though Timofei was left alone after Natasha died in 1975, the priest remained robust and energetic for almost three more decades.
When asked about his formula for health and longevity, Timofei would reply: “I pray daily, and perform God’s service every morning.”
However, in recent years Timofei was finding it increasingly hard to maintain the house and church. Just over a year ago, Timofei’s friends persuaded him that he should move into a care home. He is said to be feeling quite well for his age, but visits are not encouraged.
Even though Timofei is no longer at the church, visitors keep coming. Today many in the city are concerned about what is going to happen to the place without Timofei to look after it. Munich Mayor Christian Ude is an old friend of Timofei and has taken a personal interest in the church’s future.
“I met Faeterchen for the first time as a school kid. I bumped into him on my push‑bike,” recalled Ude. “We kids were scared of him. For us he was a ‘Russian’ with a black beard, and we thought he bewitched children.”
“Today I see him as a Munich institution, and his little house as one of the most important original constructions in Bavaria,” Ude continued.
The city is now planning to build a small museum on the site devoted to Father Timofei and Natasha.
“Of course, without Faeterchen this place will not be the same, but we will do everything to preserve its wonderful atmosphere,” said Ude.
