From the history of one German doing good in 1902-1903 for the Russian orthodoxy in Berlin

The issue of Western philanthropy for Russians, and moreover, the issue of Russian foreign Orthodoxy, is still not thoroughly studied in Russian and foreign historiography. The purpose of the article is to reveal the important economic background of non-public philanthropy in 1902-1903 from the wide known in Germany and successfully operating in Russia in the last third of the 19th century companies "AG Krupp" and "F. Schichau " to St. Prince Vladimir's Brotherhood, that collected money to build a new large Orthodox church in Berlin. To achieve it, the following tasks were determined: to describe in brief the state of Orthodox churches in the capital of the German Empire; to show the urgent need for "faithful" believers, not only from Russia, but also from other Orthodox lands, caugh t up for various reasons in Berlin to have a modern and majestic church; to point out the patronage and the recognition of the significance of the activity of St. Prince Vladimir's Brotherhood both on the part of the highest Russian and German authorities; to outline the regulatory legal background, formed in Russia in 1901-1902 that was uneasy for German firms and obstructed them in an obvious way to obtain favorable orders from the Russians; to justify the "hidden" donations of "AG Krupp" and "F. Schichau" in the amount of just over 140 thousand marks in 1902-1903 given for a good cause for the Russian Orthodoxy in Germany, not only by charitable intentions, but also by the desire to get of this the maximum of economic benefits. The methodological basis for writing the research was the polyfactorial approach, which involves a combination of various methods of scientific research, including interdisciplinary ones. Among them, one can especially distinguish narrative, historical-genetic, comparative-historical, typological, structural, systemic, and imagological techniques. The source base for the article consists of unpublished documents of the Russian State Archive of the Russian Navy. The facts and characteristics on the topic of the research from domestic and foreign scientific literature were also used. Based on the analysis, the authors came to the conclusion that "AG Krupp" and "F. Schichau", the charity of which was not public in 1902-1903, sought not only to further strengthen their image in the necessary Russian government structures, but also to circumvent the current legislation that made it more difficult to obtain advantageous military orders; that was confirmed during the implementation of the Great Naval Program of 1912.

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