The museum of St. Michael’s Lutheran Church of St. Petersburg has been receiving more information about one of its former pastors, Rev. Arnold Frischfeldt (1874-1937) who started serving St. Michael’s church in 1915, later served St. Catherine’s church and taught at Leningrad Theological Seminary. During the Stalinist repression, he was put under arrest in 1929 and 1930 and died in the Solovki special prison on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea in 1937.St. Michael’s church museum possessed a photo of Rev. Frischfeldt and had partial information about his biography, but had no knowledge whether there are any descendants of Rev. Frischfeldt’s once big family.
On October 18, 2022, however, his great-granddaughter Yekaterina Andreyeva visited St. Michael to share her memories of the family and gave the museum some of the old family photos, thus filling in the gaps in our knowledge of Rev. Frischfeldt’s biography. On October 23, two days before Pastor Frischfeldt’s birthday, Mrs. Andreyeva also gave St. Michael’s museum a family heirloom — a watercolor painting made by Rev. Frischfeldt in the 1930’s, probably as he was serving exile at Solovki, a copy of “The Last Effort of the Day” by Giovanni Segantini (1858-1899), which Frischfeldt painted from memory on the back of a school poster.
Cordial thanks to Mrs. Andreyeva for sharing her memories and for the priceless gift!
In photos: Rev. Frischfeldt and his family; museum curator Tatiana Ryumina stands in front of Rev. Frischfeldt’s portrait holding his watercolor painting. Photo by Dmitri Petrov.
