Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation
(EKFS)
legal form Foundation under private law
founding 1983
founder Else Kröner
Seat Bad Homburg vor der Höhe
purpose Promotion of medical research and medical-humanitarian development cooperation
Chair Dieter Schenk (Chair), Rudolf Herfurth, Michael Madeja (Board of Directors)
Foundation capital 6,200,000,000 euros (2018)
Website www.ekfs.de

The non-profit Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung , founded in 1983, promotes medical-scientific projects and supports medical-humanitarian projects in developing countries. Since 2014, it has had the largest foundation assets (market value) of all non-profit German foundations under private law.

history

After the Second World War, Else Kröner (born Fernau, 1925–1988) took over his foster father and sponsor Eduard Fresenius, his pharmaceutical company “Dr. Eduard Fresenius chemisch-pharmaceutical Industrie KG ” and ran it until her death in 1988. She was first managing director, and from 1982, after the company was converted into a stock corporation, chairwoman of the supervisory board. In order to ensure the continued existence of the company in its entirety after her death and to cherish the memory of Eduard Fresenius, Else Kröner founded the non-profit Else Kröner-Fresenius Foundation (EKFS) on April 7, 1983. First the foundation was equipped with a capital stock of 50,000 DM. In her will, however, the founder decreed that in the event of her death, all of her private assets - including 95 percent of Fresenius' share capital - should be transferred to EKFS. In order to guarantee the charitable status of the foundation, it was decided not to approve any funding applications that could benefit the Fresenius Group or other pharmaceutical companies.

On June 5, 1988, Else Kröner died unexpectedly at the age of 63 and the EKFS was fully operational.

Foundation purpose

In the constitution of the EKFS, Else Kröner defined the purpose of the foundation as follows:

“(1) The foundation serves to promote medical science, primarily in the areas of research and treatment of diseases, including the development of devices and preparations, for example artificial kidneys . The foundation may only support such research tasks, the results of which are accessible to the general public. The foundation also serves to promote the training of doctors or other people in the field of medical treatment and nursing, primarily in the field of dialysis , as well as the promotion of the education and training of particularly talented pupils and students. "
"(2) In compliance with Section 53 of the Tax Code, the Foundation also pursues charitable purposes by promoting accident victims and their elderly care as well as by supporting people who are dependent on the help of others due to their mental, physical or emotional condition."

organs

In administrative terms, the EKFS is divided into two bodies: the Board of Trustees and the Board of Directors. The Board of Trustees appoints the Board of Directors and oversees the management. In addition, it decides on the use of the income and the foundation's assets and decides annually on the discharge of the board of directors. A science commission has been an administrative body of the foundation since 2006 and advises the foundation council and board of directors on the selection of projects for scientific funding. Members of the science commission are Stefan Endres , Lars Maier, Heike L. Pahl, Sascha Pahernik and Christine Klein .

activities

The main focus of the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung lies in the promotion of medical research and medical-humanitarian projects. Research proposals from all areas of medicine are considered. From 1983 to the end of 2019, the foundation funded around 1930 projects with a total volume of 430 million euros. In 2019, around 60 million euros in funding were approved. Around a fifth of this was spent on humanitarian projects.

Medical-scientific funding

In its seven funding lines, the EKFS supports young scientists who are at the beginning of their independence in medical research, doctors who combine research and clinical practice in their careers (clinician scientists), medical students who are doing a high-quality doctorate, and internationally known scientists, whose research projects promise breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

The seven funding lines are:

  1. First-time and second-time applicants: Support for young scientists in the field of medicine, whose previous scientific work suggests an internationally successful career. The program aims to pave the way for scientists to get started with independent financing of their research by the large research institutions.
  2. Key projects: Financing of research projects in the field of medicine that promise a breakthrough in terms of developing a new therapeutic approach or changing generally accepted textbook knowledge.
  3. Else Kröner Memorial Scholarships: Support for particularly talented physicians at the start of their careers in order to advance a research project through a two-year release from clinical tasks.
  4. Else Kröner Excellence Scholarships: Support for outstanding physicians working in research and clinics (Clinician Scientists) in order to advance a particularly promising medical research project through a two-year release from clinical tasks. This is intended to enable doctors who have already qualified as professors to be appointed to a professorship.
  5. Else Kröner Research Colleges: Support for medical faculties and university clinics within the framework of scientific colleges in order to offer particularly talented young doctors an ideal environment to deepen their research work and to start a successful career as a researching doctor (clinician scientist).
  6. Else Kröner PhD colleges for medical students: Support of medical faculties in order to attract particularly interested and talented medical students for a demanding doctorate and to get them excited about research.
  7. Else Kröner Clinician Scientist Professorships: The professorships are intended to give doctors with outstanding performance in both patient care and research a long-term perspective to continue the career of clinician scientist.

The foundation is also active in institutional funding. With the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Center for Nutritional Medicine in Munich, the EKFS supports an institute that works on sustainable forms of nutrition in medicine. The Else Kröner-Fresenius Center for Digital Health was launched in September 2019. The aim of the center is to develop the potential of digitalization in medicine and thus better patient care.

Science awards

The foundation's largest single award is the Else Kröner Fresenius Prize for medical research . To this end, the foundation defines a research field in medicine that can be expected to develop particularly intensively in the following years. It is supposed to be an area in which new technologies open doors to previously unexplored fields or in which a revolutionary paradigm shift is heralding. Nobel laureates in medicine, editors of large, interdisciplinary medical journals and creative young researchers are involved in the selection of the respective subject area for the award.

The Else Kröner Fresenius Prize for Medical Research was awarded for the first time in 2013. In the field of immunology , he was awarded Ruslan Medzhitov . In 2017 the award (in the field of neuropsychiatry ) went to Karl Deisseroth . In 2020, the price of 2.5 million euros was awarded to Alessandro Aiuti in the field of gene therapy.

Medical-humanitarian funding

Single projects

The EKFS supports medical-humanitarian projects, primarily in developing countries. The focus here is on promoting medical teaching and improving health care.

Prices

With the Else Kröner Fresenius Prize for Medical Development Cooperation (formerly: Medical-Humanitarian Promotion Prize ), the EKFS annually honors projects to improve health care in developing countries. Since 2012 at the latest, every two years projects have been awarded which are characterized by an outstanding and sustained commitment to needy and sick people.

Dispute over the foundation

From 2008 there was a dispute over the direction of the foundation. The doctor Gabriele Kröner, Else Kröner's stepdaughter, accused the three executors of Else Kröner's estate (in particular Dieter Schenk, who was also a company lawyer), that the foundation would not distribute enough for charitable projects and biomedical research and therefore not its purpose and to have pushed them from the company's board of trustees and supervisory board. The foundation, which was estimated to have assets of 2.6 billion euros in 2008 (compared to 150 million when the founder died in 1988), had spent, for example, only 7.45 million euros in 2007 for scientific sponsorship and humanitarian purposes and had been since the foundation was founded Until 2008, only around 70 million euros flowed into such funding, while the VW Foundation, which was roughly the same size, supported projects with around 100 million euros annually. The administrators of the foundation, in turn, saw a main task of the foundation in maintaining control over the Fresenius Group, even in the case of capital increases, which prevented a higher distribution. However, the influence of the foundation could be secured in another way in 2011 with the changeover of the ownership structure of Fresenius SE as a limited partnership to shares with the foundation as general partner. At the same time, preference and common shares were converted, with the foundation's stake falling from 58 to 29 percent, but due to the new company structure they retained their right of objection. At Fresenius Medical Care, too, the KGaA structure ensured that the foundation retained control despite a stake of only around 30 percent.

literature

  • Michael Kamp, Florian Neumann: Promoting Research - Helping People 1983-2008. 25 years of the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation. August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-940061-18-8 .
  • Ina Deppe, Michael Kamp, Florian Neumann and Anna Pezold: EKFS - promoting research, helping people 2008 to 2011. August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-940061-89-8 .
  • Julia Gäbler, Nicola von Lutterotti, Florian Neumann: Focus on nutritional medicine. 10 years of Else Kröner-Fresenius-Center for Nutritional Medicine. August Dreesbach Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-944334-79-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Deutscher Ärzteverlag GmbH, editorial office of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt: Else Kröner Fresenius Foundation: 27 medical faculties ... May 3, 2018, accessed on July 7, 2020 .
  2. The largest private law foundations in Germany by assets in 2014 (in million euros) , de.statista.com, as of July 15, 2015, accessed on December 25, 2015.
  3. ↑ Purpose of the foundation | Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation. Retrieved June 30, 2020 .
  4. ^ Else Kröner-Fresenius-Foundation | Initiative Frankfurter Stiftungen eV Accessed on February 21, 2019 (German).
  5. EKFS Annual Report 2019, p. 48 ff. EKFS, April 2019, accessed on February 21, 2019 .
  6. KEM: Home. Retrieved February 20, 2019 .
  7. ^ Else Kröner Fresenius Center for Digital Health. Technical University of Dresden, accessed on June 30, 2020 (English).
  8. ^ Research award : Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung. Retrieved July 1, 2020 .
  9. Nicola von Lutterotti: Kröner Fresenius Prize to Ruslan Medzhitov: Enemies of the immune system . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed February 21, 2019]).
  10. Nicola von Lutterotti: Optogenetics: How light finds its way into the head . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed February 21, 2019]).
  11. Doctors Zeitung (eb): 2.5 million euro award for research into rare immune diseases. Doctors newspaper, June 10, 2020, accessed on June 30, 2020 (German).
  12. ^ Beatrix Seewaldt: Else Kröner Fresenius Prize for Medical Development Cooperation. Retrieved on July 7, 2020 (German).
  13. ^ Deutscher Ärzteverlag GmbH, editorial office of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt: Award. Retrieved July 7, 2020 .
  14. Medical funding as a by-product ( PDF ), FAZ , September 1, 2008 (2.32 MB)
  15. Mud Battle for the Legacy , Der Spiegel May 19, 2008
  16. Lothar Gries, The legacy of Dr. Fresenius , Boerse.ARD, 2015

Coordinates: 50 ° 13 ′ 48.4 "  N , 8 ° 38 ′ 17.5"  E