Immigrant Buddhism in Germany: Vietnamese Buddhism

Buddhism in Germany is constituted by the two strands of convert and immigrant Buddhists. Where Buddhist ideas and ethics were introduced to the educated middle strata of society in mid–19th century already, migrants and refugees from Buddhist countries arrived no earlier than the late 1970s. Currently, informed guesses reckon the number of German converts to 100,000 people, whereas the figure of Asian Buddhists living in Germany is about 120,000 people. More than half of the latter is made up of Vietnamese Buddhists who fled South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Vietnamese Buddhists have established seven places of worship during the 1980s and 1990s. The most notable place is the newly built pagoda Vien Giac in Hanover (northern Germany). The pictures provide impressions of the Hanover pagoda and its religious life. Photos are presentend showing the Vesakh and Ullambana festivals; there are also slides of a smaller place of worship, located in a common middle class house.

For more information, please see the Vien Giac Pagoda's website http://www.viengiac.de/

Information on the various convert and migrant Buddhist traditions, centers and groups in Germany can be found at the German Buddhist Union's website at http://www.dharma.de

A detailed historic-descriptive account of Vietnamese Buddhism in Germany is given in Martin Baumann, Migration, Religion, Integration. Vietnamesische Buddhisten und tamilische Hindus in Deutschland, Marburg: diagonal 2000, pp. 240.

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