Altar Ho Chi Minh

Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890 under French colonial rule. He sympathized with the Vietnamese resistance movement from an early age and was involved in the anti-colonial movement in England and Paris for several years before studying revolutionary tactics in Moscow. As an emissary of the Communist International, he organized the Vietnamese resistance against France from China. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he led the Vietnamese resistance movement Viet Minh in his home country and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945. From 1946 onwards, there were military conflicts with France, which only ended in 1954 with Vietnam's victory.

Ho Chi Minh became the first president of Vietnam, albeit at the cost of dividing the country into North and South Vietnam. He consolidated his government in North Vietnam and supported the guerrilla movement People's Liberation Armed Forces, or Viet Cong for short, in the South. Six years before the final victory over the USA and the reunification of the country in 1975, Ho Chi Minh died at the age of 79.

Since his death, he has increasingly become a symbol of a free and united country under communist leadership in Vietnam. In his mausoleum in Hanoin many of the country's temples and pagodas, Ho Chi Minh's veneration takes on religious overtones; his bust stands in accordance with the tradition of freedom fighters attaining deified status.