Bettina Bäumer
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Bettina Bäumer was born 1940 in Salzburg (Austria) as a daughter of the painter Eduard Bäumer. Due to her mother's Jewish descent, Bettina and her two siblings had to hide from the persecutions of the Nazi regime.
Bettina studied in Salzburg, Vienna and Rome and in 1967 obtained a doctorate in Munich with a thesis on "Creation as Play. The Concept of Lila in Hinduism, its Philosophical and Theological Significance".
While still a student, she became a pupil of the French Benedict monk Henri Le Saux (a.k.a. Swami Abhishiktananda), a pioneer in the meeting of Hinduism and Christianity in the 20th century. Today Bettina Bäumer is the most important conveyor of her teacher's thinking. In Varanasi (India) she worked for many years with another important of Abhishiktananda's pupils, Raimon Panikkar. In 1975 in New Delhi they created the Abhishiktananda Society, of which she became President in 1988. The Abhishiktananda Society is active internationally in the field of interreligious dialogue.
In later years, she would also meet repeatedly with Swami Lakshman Joo, the last master of Kashmir Shaivism to date.
Bettina Bäumer received her Habilitation (qualification for professorship) in 1997 from the Institute for the Study of Religion at the University of Vienna. She has been invited to teach and research at Universities throughout the world, including Harvard University, the University of Vienna, the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (France) and Banaras Hindu University. In 2006, she was a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla (India).
Bettina Bäumer's translations of the fundamental works of Indian spirituality, such as the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra of Patañjali, as well as Swami Abhishiktananda's spiritual diary, are received worldwide. They are for the understanding of the Indian tradition just as important as her research on the symbolism of temple architecture, on the philosophy and mystique of Kashmir Shaivism, or as the Breviary of the Vedic canon "Vedic Experience" which she edited together with Raimon Panikkar.
Today Bettina Bäumer stands for a bridging between Hinduism and Christianity, and to research in the field of Kashmir Shaivism. To support her efforts, she has set in Varanasi an extensive library (Samvidalaya) with rare texts and manuscripts of this tradition.
After living and working over 35 years in India she has penetrated its cultures and religions as only few Europeans have.
