Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation or Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung is an independent foundation in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

with the goal of promoting the humanities and the sciences. It is named after

Carl Friedrich von Siemens Carl Friedrich von Siemens (5 September 1872, in Berlin – 9 September 1941, in Heinendorf, near Potsdam) was a German Entrepreneur and politician. A member of the Siemens family, he became associated with Siemens & Halske AG in 1899, his family ...

and was founded in 1958 by

Ernst von Siemens Ernst Albrecht von Siemens (9 April 1903 in Kingston upon Hull – 31 December 1990 in Starnberg) was a German industrialist. Life Siemens was born in England when his father Carl Friedrich von Siemens was director of Siemens Brothers and return ...

. Heinrich Meier was its Director until March 2022. Its current Director is . Since 1960, it has been running extensive scientific programs, awarding fellowships to outstanding scientists and scholars, and supporting university libraries in Germany with more than 60 million euros for the acquisition of scientific literature. Logo of Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung

History

, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of

Siemens AG Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', ''E ...

from 1956 to 1971, established the Foundation from his private assets. It bears the name of his father Carl Friedrich von Siemens, who was also Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens Group between 1919 and 1941. From 1964 the foundation's managing director was the publicist Armin Mohler, and in 1985 Heinrich Meier succeeded Mohler.

The foundation under Armin Mohler 1964–1985

Mohler used the foundation mainly for political events. An example of this is a famos series on

Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt (; 11 July 1888 – 7 April 1985) was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party. Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. A conservative theorist, he is noted as ...

organized by Mohler in 1978. The lectures were then published by ''Propyläen-Verlag'' under the title ''Der Ernstfall'' as the second volume in the Foundation's series of publications, even though Schmitt was academically and journalistically isolated because of his commitment to

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. Speakers were Among others Knut Borchardt, Paul Carell, Hellmut Diwald and

Christian Meier Christian Dietrich Meier Zender (born June 23, 1970), best known as Christian Meier, is a Peruvian actor and singer in Latin America, the US Hispanic market, and around the Spanish speaking world. Biography Meier was born in Lima, Peru, the yo ...

. The series was understood as a tribute to Schmitt. Other publications of the foundations also dealt with persons or topics related to the

New Right New Right is a term for various right-wing political groups or policies in different countries during different periods. One prominent usage was to describe the emergence of certain Eastern European parties after the collapse of the Soviet Uni ...

. In 1980, the historian

Ernst Nolte Ernst Nolte (11 January 1923 – 18 August 2016) was a German historian and philosopher. Nolte's major interest was the comparative studies of fascism and communism (cf. Comparison of Nazism and Stalinism). Originally trained in philosophy, he was ...

gave a lecture at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation entitled ''Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus'' (Between Historical Legend and Revisionism), which the ''

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' (; ''FAZ''; "''Frankfurt General Newspaper''") is a centre-right conservative-liberal and liberal-conservativeHans Magnus Enzensberger: Alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen' (in German). ''Deutschland Radio'', ...

'' published, thus triggering the ''

Historikerstreit The ''Historikerstreit'' (, "historians' dispute") was a dispute in the late 1980s in West Germany between conservative and left-of-center academics and other intellectuals about how to incorporate Nazi Germany and the Holocaust into German hist ...

'', the so-called historians' dispute.

The foundation under Heinrich Meier 1985–2022

Today the foundation has the following priorities: * To organize scientific, interdisciplinary lecture series by individual speakers and to publish them.
Some speakers who have given lectures at the Foundation includes

Jan Assmann Jan Assmann (born Johann Christoph Assmann; born 7 July 1938) is a German Egyptologist. Life and works Assmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1966–67, he was a fellow of the German ...

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde (; 19 September 1930 – 24 February 2019) was a German legal scholar and a justice on Germany's Federal Constitutional Court. He was a professor at the University of Freiburg and the author of more than 20 books and 8 ...

, Jean Bollack,

J. M. Coetzee John Maxwell Coetzee OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in ...

, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Philippe Descola,

Louis Dumont Louis Charles Jean Dumont (11 August 1911 – 19 November 1998) was a French anthropologist. Dumont was born in Thessaloniki, in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He taught at Oxford University during the 1950s, and was then dire ...

, Ronald Dworkin, Ágnes Heller,

Paul Kirchhof Paul Kirchhof (born February 21, 1943 in Osnabrück) is a German jurist and tax law expert. He is also a professor of law, member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and, a former judge in the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (' ...

Jean-François Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...

, Peter von Matt, Ernst Mayr,

Ilya Prigogine Viscount Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (; russian: Илья́ Рома́нович Приго́жин; 28 May 2003) was a physical chemist and Nobel laureate noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. B ...

Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, ...

Karl Schlögel Karl Schlögel (born 7 March 1948 in Hawangen Hawangen is a municipality in the district of Unterallgäu in Bavaria, Germany, with about 1,254 inhabitants. Hawangen is situated east of Memmingen. The town has a municipal association with ...

, Wolf Singer, Andreas Urs Sommer and Helen Vendler. Some of the lectures are published in the series ''Themen der Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung'' (since 1985 more than 40 volumes have been published). * To award the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowships to outstanding scientists (since 1993). These fellowships support the completion of research by outstanding scientists. * To support the supplement of scientific literature, which includes the supply of university libraries. * To organize guest events, scientific conferences and international symposia. Special emphasis is placed on promoting contact between German and foreign scientists.

Critique

Numerous experts on right-wing extremism, such as

Peter Glotz Peter Glotz (6 March 1939 – 25 August 2005) was a German social democratic politician ( Social Democratic Party) and social scientist. Peter Glotz was born in Cheb, Czechoslovakia, to a German father and a Czech mother. His father, an insuranc ...

consider the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation under the management of Armin Mohlers to be a think tank of the New Right and assign the foundation to the New Right.

References

External links

Official Website
Foundations based in Germany 1958 establishments in Germany Siemens New Right (Europe) {{sci-org-stub