Buddhist catechism
Under the title " Buddhist Catechism for an Introduction to the Teaching of Buddha Gautama.", An 88-page booklet with a foreword (3 pages) by the author Subhadra Bickshu , the pseudonym of Friedrich Zimmermann , was published in 1888 .
The title, which Henry Steel Olcott had already used for his introduction to Buddhism (English Buddhist Catechism, 1881) and which was called " The Buddhist Catechism " ( Leipzig 1887) in the German translation by Erich Bischoff , also seemed to the enthusiastic Buddhist Zimmermann very suitable as a title, although it was borrowed from the Christian context, but seemed to do justice to this fundamental and comprehensive claim of an introduction to Buddhism for Europeans. Zimmermann also refers in his foreword to Olcott's catechism , which "was originally only intended for the first lessons of Sinhalese and Burmese children and therefore naturally could not quite meet the demands of educated European readers ..." and thus justifies the necessity of his work.
The quick successive new editions up to 1908 see minor changes and show the relatively great need for such a work. In the foreword to the sixth to eighth editions Zimmermann also deals with the positive and negative echoes of his little book and is proud of the discourse he has sparked: “If the sixth edition of the catechism can now appear, if in the short time already has taken a number of writers for and against Buddhism in books, pamphlets and essays party if comparisons between all Christianity are drawn and Buddhism, the churches concerned to the new enemy begins to look, and even Emperor Wilhelm II. it necessary held an allegorical painting to call on European Christianity to a common struggle against the invading Buddhism, this shows sufficiently how exactly the author's foresight has been confirmed. The sublime teaching of the Indian sage begins to have a powerful effect on all thinkers and to reshape their worldview. "
With the “allegorical painting” Zimmermann refers to the lithograph by Hermann Knackfuß “ Peoples of Europe, preserve your most sacred goods ”, from 1895, which shows an avenging angel facing a Buddha figure looming threateningly on the horizon.
And Zimmermann continues in his foreword: “The truth proclaimed by the Buddha is certainly a destroyer, but not of the most sacred goods of the peoples of Europe, but of error, delusion, superstition and spiritual and moral bondage, about which one can only be terrified have that cause, in whose advantage it is if instead of light there is darkness. "
Even after the war there was a new edition of Zimmermann's catechism, reviewed by Karl Seidenstücker . Translations into other languages were abundant, such as English, French, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Hungarian and even Japanese. (Seidenstücker himself had already published his own 30-page catechism under his pseudonym Bruno Freydank in 1904 under the title “Small Buddhist Catechism”. From 1908 he was also responsible for the new edition of the Olcott catechism in German.)
For numerous Buddhists of the 20th century, Zimmermann's “Buddhist Catechism” is at the beginning of their swing onto the “Middle Path”. (For example, Friedrich Fenzl : “A small, worn and dusty volume that fell into my hands in a Salzburg study library in the early 1950s determined my further life. It was an edition of the famous Buddhist Catechism of Subhadra Bhikshu (Friedrich Zimmermann). The booklet was first published in 1888 and is no longer even available in second-hand bookshops. I began to deal with this Far Eastern religion. " )
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- Baumann, Martin, eds. (1995). Helmut Klar - contemporary witness on the history of Buddhism in Germany , digitized