Practice, Aesthetics and Semantics of the Neo-Sannyas Movement in the Federal Republic of Germany during the 1970s and 1980s

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Papenheim
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 282461499

From the the mid-1970s Neo-Sannyas Movement of Bhagwan was one of the most important and innovative of the so-called youth religions in West Germany. At times there were up to 40,000 devotees and communes with up to 380 members. Like no other movement its practice, aesthetics and semantics embody the renegotiation of religion in the old Federal Republic. It was a hybrid phenomenon between institutionalised religion and individual identify forming and the persuit of happiness. Though it fundamentally criticised any kind of institutionalized religion, it constituted a neo-Hindu guru movement itself. It cultivated meditative contemplation and was a modern service enterprise at the same time. Most importantly, the movement combined the quest for religious meaning and guidance with therapies fostering self-reliance and well-being. Thereby, it drew on a discourse of therapy that had become increasingly popular in Germany during the 1960s and, in an innovative way, melted it with the discourse of religion. Firstly, this project shall analyse the practice of the movement by studying its offers of meditation, therapies and further services as well as the extraordinary activities with which it addressed the public. Then, it shall explore how the movement organised its day-to-day life, its festivals and rites of passage around birth, admission into the movement, marriage and death. To what extend did the movement leave behind the bourgeois and Christian arrangements of time and life and where were there similarities and continued traditions? How were gender roles defined and communication organised? Secondly, the project analyses the aesthetics of body, space and time: What symbols of affiliation where chosen? Which aesthetics were adopted to express connectivity which ones were rejected? To what extent did they differ according to gender or levels of affiliation, for instance? What extend and which function did the aesthetic orientalism have? Thirdly, the projects studies the language of the movement throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It explores its main concepts, the semantic use of terms traditionally used in the religious discourse and for semantic avoidance strategies. This threefold analysis of the Bhagwan movement will define its place in, and importance for, the culture of the Federal Republic. This will allow for comparison with the older hippie and commune movements on which the Neo-Sannyasis built, with the alternative leftist milieu with which there was much overlap, and with later forms of alternative culture such as the self-discovery, esotericism, yoga and wellness movements, all of which were shaped to a large extent by the Bhagwan movement. For the most part, the project is based on private, unpublished written sources, photographies and film footage.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants