Hinduism is a minority religion practiced by an estimated 100,000 to 150,0000 people, or an estimated 0.12% of the population in Germany.
It is the countryâÂÂs fourth-largest religion after Christianity, irreligion, and Islam. The community is highly diverse, consisting primarily of Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus (refugees since the 1980s), Indian Hindus (post-1950s migrants and recent skilled workers), smaller Afghan Hindu and Balinese groups, and a modest number of German/European converts.
Germany's encounter with Hinduism has a unique history. Unlike Britain's colonial relationship with India, GermanyâÂÂs engagement with Hinduism grew mainly out of academic and philosophical fascination.
German interest in Hinduism first grew out of the Romantic movement's deep fascination with ancient India. Indian literature captured the imagination of writers and thinkers. In 1791, Georg Forster published the first German translation of KÃÂlidÃÂsaâÂÂs famous play à ÂÃÂkuntalà(based on William Jones's English version). This work captivated major literary figures, including Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who famously wrote an epigram praising the drama. In 1808 Friedrich SchlegelâÂÂs ÃÂber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians) argued that Sanskrit was the root of a shared Indo-European language family. This theory shaped European intellectual thought and helped drive the creation of formal academic departments for Indological research.
Friedrich Max Müller (1823âÂÂ1900), born in Dessau, was one of the leading scholars who introduced ancient Hindu texts to European audiences. After studying Sanskrit under Franz Bopp in Berlin and Eugène Burnouf in Paris, he moved to England in 1846. With patronage from the East India Company, he produced the first critical edition of the Rigveda (including SÃÂyaá¹Âa's 14th-century commentary), published in six volumes between 1849 and 1874. He later edited the Sacred Books of the East (1879âÂÂ1910), a 50-volume series of English translations of major religious texts from Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and other Asian traditions.
The first significant wave of Hindu immigration to Germany began in the 1950s. Since the 1970s, Tamils from Sri Lanka arrived as asylum seekers to Germany (most of them were Hindus). In 2000, there were 90,000 Hindus in Germany. In 2007, there were 6,000 Hindus in Berlin, and in 2009, around 5,000 Hindus lived in Lower Saxony.
According to the statistics of REMID, in 2017 there were an estimated 130,000-150,000 Hindus in Germany. About 42,000âÂÂ45,000 were Sri Lankan Tamils; 60,000âÂÂ80,000 were Indian; more than 7,500 were from a white and other ethnicities; and some 7,000âÂÂ10,000 were Afghan Hindus.
Germany has over 50âÂÂ100 Hindu temples and worship sites, the large majority are Tamil. Many began as makeshift spaces and evolved into purpose-built structures.
The first Hare Krishna temple in Germany was built 1970 in Hamburg. The ISKCON guru Sacinandana Swami translated the Bhagavad Gita into German.
There are about 700 Balinese Hindu families living in Germany, with the one temple located in Hamburg in front of the Museum of Ethnology, Hamburg and the second, Pura Tri Hita Karana located in Erholungspark Marzahn, Berlin, which is a functioning Hindu temple located in the Balinese Garden of the park and it is one of the few Hindu temples of Balinese architecture built outside Indonesia.