Schmorell's father was Hugo Schmorell, a German-born medical doctor who was raised in Russia. Schmorell's mother was Natalia Vedenskaya a Russian, the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest. Schmorell was baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother died of typhus during the Russian Civil War when he was two years old. In 1920 his widowed father married a German woman, Elisabeth Hoffman, who, like him, grew up in Russia. They left Russia and moved to Munich, Germany, in 1921, when Schmorell was four years old. His Russian nanny, Feodosiya Lapschina, came along with them and she took his late mother's place in his upbringing. Alexander Schmorell grew up bilingual, speaking both German and Russian natively. His friends gave him the nickname 'Schurik', a nickname he would be called by his closer friends for the rest of his life. He was an Eastern Orthodox Christian who considered himself both German and Russian. As declared in the Gestapo's interrogations, he was a convinced Tsarist and then an archenemy of the Bolsheviks.
Military service
After his Abitur, he was called into the Reich Labour Service and then into the Wehrmacht. In 1938, he took part in the annexation of Austria and eventually in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. After his military service, the artistically gifted Alexander Schmorell began studies in medicine in 1939 in Hamburg. In the autumn of 1940, he went back with his student corps to Munich where he got to know Hans Scholl, and later Willi Graf. Together with Hans Scholl, Schmorell put together the White Rose's first four anti-Nazi leaflets. In the second leaflet Schmorell wrote a passage containing an outcry against the Holocaust.
In June 1942, Schmorell took part as a medical auxiliary in the campaign on the Eastern Front, together with Hans Scholl, Willi Graf and Jürgen Wittenstein, and came to strongly oppose the Nazis' treatment of enemy soldiers and civilians. Once back from Russia, he continued his studies in Munich in 1942–1943.
Dissident
In December 1942, Schmorell, along with Hans Scholl, sought contact with Professor Kurt Huber. Together in 1943 they wrote the fifth leaflet "Aufruf an alle Deutschen!", which Schmorell then distributed in Austrian cities. Along with Hans Scholl and Willi Graf, he also painted words such as "Nieder mit Hitler" and "Freiheit" on house walls in Munich. It is suggested that he and Sophie Scholl shared a romance, although Sophie herself was previously engaged to Fritz Hartnagel. However, little evidence of this exists outside Lillian Groag's play The White Rose. After the arrests of Christoph Probst and Hans and Sophie Scholl, Schmorell attempted to escape to Switzerland, but was eventually arrested on 24 February 1943, the day of his friends' funeral, after being recognized in an air raid shelter.
Trial and execution
Alexander Schmorell was sentenced to death on 19 April 1943 at the Volksgerichtshof in the second trial against the White Rose. In the letters he wrote from prison he tried to console his family and assured them that he was at peace with his fate and not fearful of death. On 13 July 1943, at the age of 25, Schmorell was put to death by guillotine along with Kurt Huber at the Munich-Stadelheim Prison.
Sainthood
Completing the act of canonization, Alexander was glorified as a saint and passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in Munich, Germany on February 5, 2012.
In film
Schmorell was portrayed by Johannes Suhm in the film .
