Abstract:
On August 15th 1903 Dr. Karl Seidenstuecker founded in Leipzig the first Buddhist
community of Europe. This small group remained rather fragile since its birth had not
been welcomed by others. Especially the Protestant Church, which was dominating
religious life in Leipzig, attacked this small circle, as its general-secretary,
Seidenstuecker, being the son of a Lutheran superintendent had attacked christianity,
fiercely (writing anonymously “The Atrocities of ‘Christian’ Civilization”). Not being
surprised at attacks from this side the BMVfD struggled severely to free itself from the
influences of the German theosophical movement which had transferred its
headquarters in 1898 to Leipzig. The problem of ‘true and false Buddhism’ was in this
quarrel a rather important one. Seidenstuecker, being an Indologist, attacked the
Blavatsky concept as well as Olcott’s concept very heavily (despite having translated
Olcott’s >Buddhist Catechism< into German). Since the theosophists proved to be
stronger than the Buddhists,the latter suffered setbacks. They collapsed soon but came
back as “Buddhistische Gesellschaft in Deutschland” (1906), which founded the
“Buddhistische Central-Bibliothek”, das “MahabodhiZentrum” (1907), the “Mahabodhi-
Centrale – Buddhistisches Lehr- und Missionsinstitut” (1909), and the “Deutsche Zweig
der Mahabodhi-Gesellschaft (DZMG)” (1911) with Seidenstuecker as secretary. All these
Leipzig based communities were in bitter dispute with other emerging German Buddhist
institutions, such as f.i. the “Deutsche Pali-Gesellschaft” (1909), that favoured a nondharmapalic
Theravada and the Halle based “Bund fuer buddhistisches Leben ” (1912).
The German éxilé to New York C.T. Strauss, who became the first ‘white Buddhist’
during the Worldparliament of Religions in Chicago, promoted the case of the DZMG
considerably since he maintained close ties to Dharmapala and settled in Leipzig in
1909. Taking part in the temperance campaigns of the Anagarika (f.i. in 1912) he
regularly visited Ceylon. On June 12th 1912 Justice of Peace, D. A. de Silva - through
the help of M. Nanissara and Dharmapala – empowered the Leipzig DZMG to speak on
behalf of the MBS. By this act the ‘putsch’ of the rival factions - and the theosophical
claims to interpret Buddhism – was defeated. The Anagarika type of Buddhism gained
the upper hand in Germany – for a couple of years – of other Buddhist tendencies, as
well as thesophic, esoteric and occult ones.Since Leipzig, in those days, was the media
centre of Germany, where the main Buddhist periodicals were edited, this was an
important event for the Buddhist business in Germany.
