St Alexei's Russian Memorial Church was built in 1913 for the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of Nations, in which Russian troops and their European allies had fought against Napoleon's army.October 1913, the church was dedicated to the memory of the 22,000 Russian soldiers who had fallen in the battle.
The building imitates the 16th century Novgorod style and is a copy of the Ascension of Christ Church in Kolomenskoye (Moscow). The designs for the church building came from the architect Vladimir A. Pokrovskij from St Petersburg. The implementation of the designs and construction lay in the hands of the Leipzig architects Richard Tschammer and Georg Weidenbach. While the building costs ran into more than one million marks for the Russians, the Leipzig City Council allowed the land for building to be used free of charge – in the same place where the actual battle had been fought in 1813.
Along with its position as a museum, it is also a place of worship for a Russian Orthodox parish in Leipzig.
print version