Peter Gang

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Peter Gäng (born September 19, 1942 in Stettin ) is a German philosopher , Indologist and political activist.

Live and act

Until the early 1960s, Gäng worked as a chemical-technical assistant in his originally learned profession . After graduating from high school , he studied indology , philosophy and social sciences at the Free University of Berlin . Addressed by the classical Indian texts, he turned to Buddhism as a student . “My own desire to become a Buddhist monk and to withdraw to study the texts is overturned by an event. The self-immolation of a Vietnamese monk causes him to adopt a different attitude and become politically active. "

After the Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức burned himself to death in Saigon in June 1963 to protest against the suppression of Buddhists by President Ngô Đình Diệm , Peter Gäng joined the Socialist German Student Union (SDS). In the SDS he was a leader with Jürgen Horlemann and Klaus Gilgenmann in the SDS working group "South Vietnam" founded in early 1965.

Positions in the SDS

In 1966 Gäng was elected the second federal chairman of the SDS. According to Der Spiegel , the “revolutionary group of philosophers” led by him was called the “gang gang”.

After the Battle of Tegeler Weg in 1968, a controversy arose over the question of violence in political struggle, against which some of the leading members spoke out. “The two SDS members Jürgen Horlemann and Peter Gäng, on the other hand, defend the attack. While Horlemann thinks that the student opposition, which has been criminalized for a long time, has recognized that one can free oneself from the apparently predetermined role of a victim of justice, Gäng speaks of a first direct attack on the state apparatus. This posed the question of power, as it was also popular in the confrontation at universities and in companies. "

On April 11, 1968, the student leader Rudi Dutschke was shot by Josef Bachmann in Berlin. Many blamed the Bild newspaper and its reporting on Dutschke and the student movement for the attack. "Picture shot with!" It said. Serious unrest followed in West Berlin and other cities. Demonstrators tried to storm the Springer house in Berlin and set fire to Bild trucks. The Hamburg print shop was besieged to prevent the delivery of "Bild", the Bild editorial office in Munich was devastated by students. The involved Peter Gäng said: “In our actions against these machines, against deliveries and against buildings, we have to demonstrate again and again that our aim here is to destroy a manipulation machine, that we will not repeat the mistake that we made after the June 2nd ”- when Benno Ohnesorg was killed by a police officer -“ did, namely to demand abstractly: dispossess Springer! And do nothing about it. ”

Buddhism researcher

Gäng received his PhD on Buddhist mysticism and published several books on Buddhist topics. He is a co-founder of the Buddhist Academy Berlin-Brandenburg and the Buddhist Study Publishing House. He became known for his German translations of Tantric-Buddhist texts from Sanskrit such as Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇatantra and Guhyasamājatantra .

Publications (selection)

Books

  • with Jürgen Horlemann : Vietnam: Genesis of a Conflict (With the DVD "Vietnam Herbst 68") Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main 2008 (First 1967, Edition Suhrkamp; 173), ISBN 978-3-518-41986-1 .
  • with Reimut Reiche : Models of the colonial revolution: Description and documents Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 1967.
  • What is buddhism Frankfurt, New York (Campus), 1996
  • Tantric Buddhism. Experimental mysticism - radical sensuality. Berlin Theseus Verlag 2001 ( ISBN 978-3-89620-155-3 )

items

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Pfand: Interview with the Buddhism researcher Dr. Peter Gäng on June 4, 2008
  2. ↑ "Twenty Years After. Conversation with Peter Gäng, member of the working group Vietnam of the Berlin SDS 1964 and from 1966 second federal chairman of the SDS. “In: Werner Balsen, Karl Rössel: Hoch die Internationale Solidarität. On the history of the third world movement in the Federal Republic. Cologne 1986
  3. ↑ Can I go in? in Der Spiegel 50/1968
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar : "Beatings that shape? - How violence at major events forms biographies. ” On: Publikative.org
  5. ↑ Quoted from: Jutta Ditfurth : Rudi and Ulrike. Story of a friendship. Munich: Droemer Knaur 2008, ISBN 978-3-426-27456-9
  6. ↑ Peter Gäng (trans.): The Tantra of the Grausig-Gross-Terrible. Berlin: Thorn apple production 1981 ( ISBN 978-3-923159-00-0 )
  7. ↑ Peter Gäng (trans.): The Tantra of the Hidden Union = Guhyasamāja Tantra. Munich: Diederichs 1988 ( ISBN 978-3-424-00946-0 )
personal data
SURNAME Go ahead, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philosopher and Indologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin