Abstract
By the beginning of the twentieth century, most areas of the globe had been explored by travelers from Europe. There was, however, one region in the heart of Asia that Europeans had attended to only very sporadically: Tibet. Yet there was an ever-growing drive to explore the culture and environment of this alien country from the first half of the nineteenth century onward. A German geography textbook explained in 1931:
The rule of the priests over the land explains its isolation; for they feed the fanatical dislike of the “foreign devils” amongst the people. But it seems that even the state of the lamas cannot close its borders for all eternity. For centuries Tibet has belonged to China in name, but it has been situated as a buffer state between the Russian and English Empires. At the moment the English have a certain influence in this elevated country, and in 1922 a telegraph line was even installed between India and Lhasa.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See for instance Heinz Hürten, Deutsche Katholiken 1918 bis 1945 (Paderborn, 1992); Gerhard Besier, The Holy See and Hitler’s Germany (Basingstoke, 2007, transl. W.R. Ward); Kurt Nowak, Evangelische Kirche und Weimarer Republik (Weimar, 1988); Michael Brenner and Derek Penslar, eds., In Search of Jewish Community: Jewish Identities in Germany and Austria 1918–1933 (Bloomington, 1998); Cornelia Hecht, Juden und Antisemitismus in der Weimarer Republik (Bonn, 2003); Wolfgang Benz, Arnold Paucker, and Peter Pulzer, eds., Jüdisches Leben in der Weimarer Republik (Tubingen, 1998); Walter Grab and Julius Schoeps, eds., Juden in der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart, 1986).
Athanasius Kircher, China monumentis: quà sacris quà profanis, nee non variis nature and artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrata (Amstelodami, 1667); Jiirgen Offermanns, Der lange Weg des Zen-Buddhismus nach Deutschland (Stockholm, 2002), 115–32.
Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape (London, 1989), 245. For details of the military expedition, see Patrick French, Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (London, 1995).
Elisabeth Booz, A Guide to Tibet (London, 1986), 138–9; Donald Lopez, The Story of Buddhism (San Francisco, 2001).
Indra Sengupta, From Salon to Discipline: State, University, and Lndology in Germany, 1821–1914 (Heidelberg, 2005).
Emil Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Tibet: Illustrated by Literary Documents and Objects of Religious Worship, With an Account of the Buddhist Systems Preceding Lt in Lndia (Leipzig, 1863), 12.
Douglas McGetchin, “Wayward Disciples: lndology and Buddhism in fin-de-siècle Germany” in Sanskrit and “Orientalism”: Lndology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750–1958, ed. Douglas McGetchin et al. (New Delhi, 2004), 309; Heinrich Dumoulin, “Buddhism and Nineteenth-Century German Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas (1981): 457–70; Offermanns, Weg, 205–8.
Walter Schmidt, “Die ‘Fremdreligionen’ in Deutschland: Hinduismus— Buddhismus—Islam,” Evangelische Zentrale für Weltanschaungsfragen, Lnformation Nr. 46 (Stuttgart, 1971): 8.
Klaus-Josef Notz, Der Buddhismus in Deutschland in seinen Selbstdarstellungen (Frankfurt, 1984), 46; Schmidt, “Fremdreligionen,” 9.
See the website of the Buddhistisches Haus at http://www.buddhistisches-haus.de/history.php?lang=de; B. and R. Hildebrandt and Christiane Knop, eds., Gartenstadt Frohnau (Berlin, 1985), 31. Dahlke opposed some of Georg Grimm’s interpretations of Buddhism and distanced himself from the practice of using Western philosophy to explain central tenets of Buddhism. Notz, Buddhismus, 65.
Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, eds., Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore (Cambridge, 1997), 273; “Rabindranath Tagore in Berlin,” Vossische Zeitung (June 2, 1921).
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha: Eine indische Dichtung (Berlin, 1922).
Hermann Hesse, My Belief: Essays on Life and Art, ed. Theodore Ziolkowski, transl. Denver Lindley (London, 1976), 382.
Hermann Hesse, Die Morgenlandfahrt (Zürich, 1932), and Das Glasperlenspiel (Zurich, 1943).
Graf Hermann Keyserling, Das Reisetagebuch eines Philosophen (Darmstadt, 1920, two vols., 4th ed.), 375.
Otfried von Hanstein, Der Klosterschüler von Taschi-lunpo (Hamburg, 1923); Gustav Meyrink, Fledermäuse: Erzählungen, Fragmente, Aufsätze, ed. Eduard Frank (Munich, 1981), 53–67.
Alexandra David-Néel, Heilige und Hexer: Glaube und Aberglaube im Land des Lamaismus (Leipzig, 1931).
Nikolaus Wachsmann, “Marching under the Swastika: Ernst Jünger and National Socialism, 1918–33,” Journal of Cotemporary History (1998): 578; Rolf von Bockel, Kurt Hiller und die Gruppe Revolutionärer Pazifisten, 1926–1933 (Hamburg, 1990); Dieter Riesenberger, Die katholische Friedensbewegung in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf, 1976); Modris Eksteins, “All Quiet on the Western Front and the Fate of a War,” Journal of Contemporary History (1980): 350.
Christoph Gellner, Weisheit, Kunst und Lebenskunst: Fernöstliche Religion und Philosophic bei Hermann Hesse und Bertolt Brecht (Mainz, 1994), 103.
Michael Ermarth, ed., Kurt Wolff (Chicago, 1991), 127.
Wolfgang Bohn, “Buddhismus und Geistes-Kultur der Gegenwart,” Zeitschrift fur Buddhismus (1921): 3.
See, for instance, Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Berkeley, 2001).
Quoted in Deborah Small, “Sadly materialistic…: Perceptions of Shops and Shopping Streets in Weimar Berlin,” Journal of Popular Culture (2000): 150.
Albert Tafel, Meine Tibetreise (Stuttgart, 1923, second ed.), 212.
Walter Bosshard, Durch Tibet und Turkistan: Reisen im unberührten Asien (Stuttgart, 1930), 239.
Paul Bauer, UmdenKantsch: Derzweitedeutsche Angriffaufden Kangchendzönga 1931 (Munich, 1933), 7. Bauer later became one of the most prominent Himalayan mountaineers of the Third Reich, participating in several expeditions to Nanga Parbat, the so-called “German mountain” or “mountain of loyalty”.
Konrad Guenther, “Die Tropennatur als Führerin zur Abkehr vom Leben,” Zeitschrift für Buddhismus (1920): 24.
Hettie Dyhrenfurth, Memsahb im Himalaja (Leipzig, 1931), 71.
Sven Hedin, Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Leipzig, 1925), 31.
Georg Grimm, “Zur Einführung,” Buddhistischer Weltspiegel (1919): 3.
Georg Grimm, “Ist die Lehre des Buddha Wissenschaft?,” Buddhistischer Weltspiegel (1920): 100.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2011 John Alexander Williams
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Neuhaus, T. (2011). How Can a War Be Holy? Weimar Attitudes Toward Eastern Spirituality. In: Williams, J.A. (eds) Weimar Culture Revisited. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117259_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230117259_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29215-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-11725-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)