Qualla: Das Buddhistische Haus

Das Buddhistische Haus: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Josue007, CC BY-SA 3.0. Frohnau is the top of Berlin, a quiet garden suburb of pines and villas that runs up against the Brandenburg border and then stops. Nothing much is supposed to happen there. Then the road bends, and there is a gate flanked by elephants in the Sinhalese manner, and behind it a long flight of steps climbing through the trees toward a white building with a roofline that belongs several thousand kilometres away. Das Buddhistische Haus has stood on this hillside since 1924, which makes it the oldest Theravada Buddhist centre in Europe and, by most measures, the largest. A Berlin physician built it after travelling in Asia. Three decades later, when it was half-ruined and being discussed for demolition, it was rescued by a man in Colombo who had simply heard it existed.

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Image: Josue007 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Das Buddhistische Haus: The Doctor Who Went East

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Josue007, CC BY-SA 3.0. Paul Dahlke was a physician with a practice in Berlin, and he was also, from 1900, a Buddhist - a conversion that followed his travels in Asia and several journeys to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) before the First World War. He learned Pali and translated its texts into German, which at...

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Image: Josue007 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Das Buddhistische Haus: Steps Through the Pines

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KWa, Public domain. The architect was Max Meyer, and the brief was unusual for Berlin in the 1920s: a German building that reads as Sri Lankan. Elements of Sinhalese Buddhist architecture run through the whole compound - the elephant gate at the road, the long ascending stair, a reflecting pond, the...

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Image: KWa | Public domain

Das Buddhistische Haus: The Years of Silence

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Boonekamp, CC0. Dahlke died in 1928, four years after moving in. The house passed to his relatives, and the Buddhists who had gathered around him met in a house nearby instead. By 1941 the Nazi government had prohibited Buddhist meetings and publications altogether, and the place went quiet. Aft...

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Image: Boonekamp | CC0

Das Buddhistische Haus: December 1957

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Dahlke, Public domain. Weeraratna bought the building from Dahlke's nephew in December 1957, on behalf of the Society's trustees. The result was something new: the first Buddhist mission on German soil run not by Germans but by Sinhalese monks from Sri Lanka. The house was renovated as a working temple...

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Image: Paul Dahlke | Public domain

Das Buddhistische Haus: What Frohnau Keeps

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ekem, CC BY-SA 4.0. The compound is now a listed national heritage site, its gardens separately protected as a garden monument, which in German practice means the trees and the stairway are as legally untouchable as the walls. The temple is open to the public - about 5,000 people came through in 200...

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Image: Ekem | CC BY-SA 4.0