Buddhism in Germany,

Germany is and has always been the only rival to England in its interest in Bsm. Apart from its own pioneer Bst. scholars, as Neumann and Oldenberg, German scholars have become famous in other lands, as Nyanatiloka (q.v.) and Govinda (q.v.). In 1903 a Buddhist Mission Society was founded at Leipzig, and held a Buddhist Congress in 1906.

As early as 1888 the Bhikshu Subhadra (Zimmermann) published his Buddhist Catechism, while Buddhist Essays of Dr Paul Dahlke (q.v.) appeared in 1908. George Grimm’s Old Buddhist Community was founded at Utting in Bavaria in 1921; the Gemeinde um Buddha worked in Berlin from 1928–33, and by the Second World War there were active centres also in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Munich.

Düsseldorf and Cologne, some publishing their own journals. After the war Guido Auster founded a Bst.

Secretariat in Berlin to reorganize the suppressed Bst. activities, and in 1955 a pan- German society was founded as the Deutsche Buddhistische Union, with headquarters in Munich (now Hamburg).