Echo
2026
When monks become masons - glimpses behind the monastery walls
ndr.de, April 2026
When monks become masons (pdf file)
Audio report
2025
“To work on a church tower is probably the secret dream of many a carpenter.”
Bulletin of the European Journeymen Guilds No. 88, 2025
Bulletin No. 88 (pdf file)
Church chant and Orthodoxy - meaning and existence of church chant in the Orthodox Church
Voice of the Diocese No. 36, 2025
Voice of the Diocese No. 36 (pdf file)
An evening praise service at Holy Trinity Monastery
July 2025
Parish newsletter of the Catholic parish of St Michael in Göttingen (pdf file)
Western and Orthodox Christians celebrate together the highest feast of the church year - Easter 2025
April 2025
“What does Easter mean and which traditions are connected with it?” (pdf file)
2019
“Orthodoxy has no independent tradition in Germany; Orthodox Christians have so far come here from abroad. There is one exception: the German Orthodox Holy Trinity Monastery in Buchhagen.”
deutschlandfunk.de, December 2019
Secular life as spiritual castration (pdf file)
Audio report
“In Orthodox monastic communities, Byzantine as well as Gregorian traditions are not only cultivated but also further developed. One special feature is the chant based on natural tones at the German Orthodox Holy Trinity Monastery in Buchhagen.”
deutschlandfunk.de, December 2019
Right to one’s own language (pdf file)
Audio report
“The daily services are sung almost entirely in German. Indeed, the Orthodox Christian faith here is quite naturally connected with German language and culture.”
March 2019
Orthodoxographia (pdf file)
“It seems as though this place had fallen out of time.”
food and farm, February 2019
Heavenly Conditions (pdf file)
2017
“The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky once gave literary expression to his conviction that beauty would save the world. This can be felt in Buchhagen, in a small Orthodox monastery in the middle of the Weser Uplands.”
Der Pilger, 2017
Beauty of the Pilgrims (pdf file)
“From the beginning, the church music of Orthodoxy, together with the architecture of churches, woodcarving, icon painting and liturgical poetry (hymnography), has belonged to the ‘divine’ arts through which the faithful strive to praise God fittingly.”
German Music Information Centre, February 2017
Music in the Orthodox Churches (pdf file)
2016
“Such instructive evenings were an invaluable treasure for the young German monk. They radiated a completely different spirit from everything taught in theology and philosophy lectures in the West.”
Monastery Bulletin, December 2016
Schema-Archimandrite Johannes: On the Mystery of Monasticism (pdf file)
2014
“In a small crypt painted with frescoes they celebrate their services, in German and with melodies that draw from the oldest traditions, but are based on the sound and prosodic characteristics of German.”
Gutes aus Klöstern, 2014
German Choral Chant (pdf file)
2012
“The monks made the liqueur themselves; we spoke about how they climbed into the trees early in the morning to pick the wild cherries.”
Gutes aus Klöstern, 2012
2011
“For this reason Abbot Johannes undertook the venture of founding a new chant tradition in the Orthodox Church: German Choral Chant. Its sources are the oldest tonal worlds of the Orthodox peoples, but also Gregorian chant.”
Gutes aus Klöstern, 2011
“The German Orthodox Holy Trinity Monastery of Buchhagen in the Weser Uplands turned twenty last year, yet the monastery church still has to be built. Abbot Johannes drew up the plans long ago.”
Gutes aus Klöstern, 2011
Sound Spaces of Eternity (pdf file)
2009
“Together with professors and students of the Free University of Berlin, monks from Mount Athos in Greece and his brothers in the Buchhagen monastery, Abbot Johannes worked intensively and very precisely on the translation from Greek into German.”
Weg und Fährte, April 2009