Ernst Strassmann Foundation
The Ernst Strassmann Foundation is an organizational point of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Affiliate, 1981-2008 operating, equipped with a personal fortune Foundation , which it had set itself the goal of "working up the Nazi past" to encourage and support.
background
The foundation was established in 1981 at the instigation of Resi Strassmann in honor of her husband, the Berlin district court counselor Ernst Strassmann (1897–1958). Ernst Strassmann and the Hamburg businessman Hans Robinsohn led a liberal resistance group ( Robinsohn-Strassmann-Gruppe ) between 1934 and 1942 . While trying to travel to Sweden to meet representatives of the British secret service, he was arrested on August 19, 1942 and taken to the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse , where he was held in solitary confinement until the end of the war.
Funding policy
According to the widow's will, the foundation - bearing in mind the painful experiences that were made in Germany as a result of the National Socialist dictatorship - primarily supported academic papers that took up these experiences and thus contributed to the consolidation and expansion of democracy in the Federal Republic. This was done primarily by means of scholarships, printing allowances and similar donations to social scientists as well as to art and music students. The private assets, which formed the starting capital of the foundation, could be increased considerably through a clever investment policy. The head of the foundation, Jutta Lange-Quassowski , worked on a voluntary basis for 27 years and raised additional funds for the foundation, so that the Ernst-Strassmann-Foundation was able to use a total of 2.55 million DM to support qualified projects.
Funded work and projects
Social science scholarships or grants for research trips, for the creation of exhibitions, catalogs, films and other media productions served to develop and present the many facets of the examination of the Nazi past. This includes the history leading to the Nazi regime as well as the continued effects of Nazi ideology, Nazi injustice or those who were burdened by Nazi in the Federal Republic. The Ernst-Strassmann-Stiftung supported a number of conferences on the above-mentioned thematic focus and made it possible to print the results - for example the first international conference on the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto . Thanks to the support of the Ernst Strassmann Foundation, many research results that were achieved thanks to the scholarships, but also important publications that came about in other ways, were able to appear in books. The list of funded book publications includes around 50 titles, including classics such as Ulrich Herbert's study on Werner Best or Gisela Lehrke's early examination of “Memorials to the Victims of National Socialism”.
In the fields of art and music, the promotion of which was particularly important to the founder, scholarships are available. a. to qualify for therapeutic work, i.e. art therapy and music therapy, later, however, music history studies related to National Socialism were also funded. This includes the work of Willem de Vries on the “Sonderstab Musik”, the sensational publication of which abruptly ended the fifty-year career of the highly respected musicologist, Wolfgang Boetticher . De Vries was able to prove that until 1945 Bötticher was responsible for countless expropriations of musical instruments, sheet music, etc., which had mainly belonged to Jewish musicians, as well as for the theft of musical treasures from museums in the countries occupied by Germany during the war, which Boetticher did until then had always denied.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Horst R. Sassin: Liberals in the Resistance. The Robinsohn-Strassmann Group 1934–1942. Hamburg 1993.
- ^ W. Paul Strassmann: The Strassmanns. The fate of a German-Jewish family over two centuries . Campus, Frankfurt / New York 2006, p. 316 .
- ↑ FES-info 2/2008, p. 30 - online at library.fes.de
- ^ "The past warns! - On the 40th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto", Tagung d. Friedrich Ebert Foundation in collaboration with d. Ernst Strassmann Foundation from May 27-29, 1983 in Bergneustadt, documentation online. Retrieved April 26, 2017 .
- ^ Ulrich Herbert: Best. Biographical Studies on Radicalism, Weltanschauung and Reason, 1903-1989. Bonn 1996.
- ↑ Gisela Lehrke: Memorials for Victims of National Socialism. Historical and political education in places of resistance and persecution. Frankfurt am Main, New York 1988.
- ^ Willem de Vries: Special staff music. Organized looting in Western Europe 1940-1945 . Dittrich Verlag, Cologne 1998.
- ^ Dittrich Verlag: Press comments on Willem de Vries' publication Sonderstab Musik. Retrieved April 26, 2017 .