The German-Russian Connections

A lot have been written recently about the economic ties between Germany and Russia, mostly by people who worriy that Germany is elinquenshing its leadership in the integration of europe.

But The connection between Germany and Russia goes back a long way. Russia's empress, Caherine the Great, was German. She reigned at the time that Leo Tolstoy was writing "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". Tolstoy married German-Russian Countess Sophia Andreyevna Behrs and could speak German. To commemorate the centenial of Tolstoy's death, there is currently an exhibition at the Literaturhaus in Munich, where Tolstoy's diaries are on display. According to Svetlana Novikova from the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow, Tolstoy loved German music, Beethoven, Bach, the philosophers and the German writers. The curator of the exhibition at the Literaturhaus, Doering-Smirnov, said that Tolstoy apparently picked up and empathy from his German tutor, Friedrich Roessl. Tolstoy learned about social responsibility from Professor Meyer at Kazan University, and that it's important not just to philosophize but that philosophy also has to be practically implemented.

"A light rose up within me," wrote Leo Tolstoy in German in his diary of his encounter with the German-Jewish author Berthold Auerbach in Berlin in 1861. This quote "Ein Licht mir aufgegangen" is the title of the exhibition http://www.literaturhaus-muenchen.de/programm/ausstellung.asp?ID=7871