Abentheuer, Germany

Dear Śrīla Prabhupāda,

Please accept our most humble obeisances in the dust of your divine lotus feet.

nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate bhaktivedānta-svāmin iti nāmine

namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe
nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe

When you first set foot on the European continent, it was 1969 and you came to Hamburg, ­Germany, from New York. You landed on an early Sunday morning, August 25, 1969.

As always with you, that was the beginning of many, many firsts. You were the very first spiritual master to grace Germany from the long line of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas going back thousands of years, with the most recent appearance in 1486 of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, the Supreme Lord Himself, who had descended to spread the yuga-dharma of this age: the congregational chanting of the Lord’s holy names.

Although in 1933 your Godbrother Bon Mahārāja had been in Berlin and met a professor, who later also went to India and became an initiated disciple of Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Mahārāja, it was upon your arrival that the mission of Lord Caitanya first took significant hold in Germany.

By August 1968, you had already sent a young disciple of yours ahead – a boy you’d met in Montreal. His name was Śivānanda Dāsa. Alone, but blessed with the determination to spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness in Europa, Śivānanda had been refused entry into London, so he’d gone on to Amsterdam, and finally ended up in Hamburg, Germany, where you confirmed he should stay and preach. By the time you arrived in August 1969, he had gotten assistance from some of his godbrothers and also attracted the very first German-born devotees. On September 3, 1969, on the first Janmāṣṭamī that you celebrated on the European continent, you initiated some of those first German devotees.

As you once told your disciples about your Guru Mahārāja, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī Mahārāja, “My Guru Mahārāja was tenth in the line from Lord Caitanya. That makes me the eleventh.” As you were talking to your young devotees, using a grave tone to capture the gravity of your point: “You are all disciples and you are the twelfth generation in the line of disciplic succession from Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.”

Not only were you the first ācārya in the Gauḍīya line to come to Germany, but you also carried – in your hand luggage – the very first Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities to be installed on the European continent.

After staying with the devotees in Hamburg for two and a half weeks, you boarded a plane for your next destination – London – again carrying, in your hand luggage, the Deities you had hoped to install in Hamburg. You felt that the temple and the devotees were still not ready to receive Their Lordships, even though you had had the Deities worshiped with an ārati on the day you arrived in Germany. This ārati was performed in your flat, with most of the devotees seeing this kind of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa worship for the very first time.

Still, in Germany, you introduced a devotee to the Deities, taking him into your room and showing him Their makeshift altar in a closet. You told him, “You should know that you are actually cooking for Them, not for me.” At that time, there were only a few installed Deities in the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, so the concept of Deity worship was very new, but you, Śrīla Prabhupāda, were so merciful to the devotees at that time to let them in on a deep secret: that the Deity is nondifferent from Śrī Kṛṣṇa!

This happened a little more than a month after you had installed the small Śrī Śrī Rukmiṇī-Dvārakādīśa in Los Angeles, on July 16, 1969. Now, as the devotees in Germany got really serious about finding a better place, they informed you in the middle of September 1969 that they had indeed found a better place and were preparing for the arrival of Their Lordships.

As you were still in London and very much engaged in getting the Bury Place temple ready, you sent Tamal Krishna Goswami with those very same Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities you had brought and then taken away. He was to install Them – which he did on November 23, 1969. Another first: an American-born devotee preforming a Deity installation.

These Deities had been with you in your rooms as you traveled. Yamunā Devī had learned to dress, paint, and decorate Deities by serving these very Deities, and now They had been installed as the first Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities in Europe in your budding International Society for Krishna Consciousness in Hamburg.

Later, when the devotees found a castle and moved to Schloss Rettershof, these Deities became the central attraction of our new German headquarters temple. You also personally came there in 1974 and held a grand initiation of devotees from many European countries in Their presence.

Although these Deities are small – only ten inches tall, made of brass – They are still the main yātrā Deities of Germany, even after fifty-six years. Here in Goloka Dhāma They are served and worshiped with the marble Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madana-mohana and Śrī Śrī Gaura-Nitāi.

As the story goes regarding the larger set of marble Deities, one of your female disciples was sent to Jaipur to get a set about forty or fifty inches tall. These were to be installed in Paris. But as this devotee saw a gorgeous Rādhārāṇī who was just sixteen inches tall, she felt she had to take Her. It took her a few days more to find the right Kṛṣṇa for Her – He had to be about twenty inches tall. As these Lordships came to Paris, it was clear that They were much too small to become Rādhā-Parisīśvara! They were kept in a box for some time, until Haṁsadūta Prabhu, at that time in charge of management at Schloss Rettershof, saw Them and simply brought Them with him to Germany.

Back at the Schloss, he asked you more than once over the course of a year if these Deities could be installed, and more than once you answered no. Then, in 1975, without real authorization, Haṁsadūta arranged for the Deity installation. He did not even inform you that he had done it at the time. He considered Their worship an addition to the already installed and worshiped Deities.

At the Māyāpur festival one of the following years, there was an expo, with pictures of Deities from around the world. As you toured the expo you stopped in front of the picture of these beautiful marble Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madana-mohana Deities and asked, “And who are They?” You were informed that this was Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madana-mohana at the Schloss, in Germany. You said, “Oh, They are very demanding Deities! They need nine pūjārīs!”

These Deities are the heart of our Goloka Dhāma. They are mesmerizing, attractive, and expert at engaging all the devotees in Their service.

This year we will be celebrating a festival for the fiftieth jubilee anniversary of Their installation. Since it is not so easy for the devotees living there and performing the daily worship of these gorgeous Deities to understand the full significance of Their story and your personal involvement in bringing the choṭa Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa Deities here, we are trying to get whoever attends from among your disciples to speak of the significances of both sets of Deities. (Note to the reader: if you have more information or corrections to what I’ve written here, please let us know.)

The reason I have written this historical account about you and the Deities we worship is because all the devotees serving here at the Goloka Dhāma community today should know the significance and connection that their daily service has to you.

At the last meeting in Māyāpur in 1977, where a report of the books printed and distributed in various languages was presented to you, Germany had distributed 2,125,000 books. How pleased you were to see your books printed and distributed – nothing pleased you more. So toward this end, to increase the mood of the devotees at our temple to do nothing but please you, we have installed a book room we call the Brihat Mridanga in our newly built extension. Now every devotee and guest can pick up a stack of your books for a very reasonable price for further distribution.

For us, dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, we are simply trying to maintain and expand on what you have personally started. That is our main connection to you.

Devotees serving in all capacities at Goloka Dhāma are all (except one, your initiated disciple Viṣṇujasa Prabhu) devotees in the thirteenth and fourteenth generations, as you described it, in the line of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. We know you from your books, your lectures, and from being engaged in your mission. By now, more than fifty-five books have been written by your disciples about you and their personal time with you, and we take great solace in reading about you. That is all we want – to be connected to you and absorbed in your mission of spreading Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We want to represent you to the very best of our capacity.

Thank you for all the beginnings and firsts you brought to this place and for all the devotees you sent and inspired between then and now. You and the devotees who served you sincerely are the reason we have everything here and can serve Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Madana-mohana at Goloka Dhāma, ISKCON Abentheuer, Germany, today.

Your servant,

Mañjula-maṇi Devī Dāsī, on behalf of all Goloka Dhāmīs