Hanns Seidel Foundation

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Hanns Seidel Foundation
(HSS)
logo
legal form Registered association
founding November 7, 1966
Seat Munich GermanyGermany
purpose Citizenship education, political and social research.
Chair Markus Ferber
Managing directors Oliver Jörg (Secretary General)
Employees 270
Members maximum 40
Website hss.de

The Hanns Seidel Foundation e. V. is a party-affiliated foundation in the legal form of a registered association based in Munich , which is closely related to the CSU .

history

Hanns Seidel Foundation, Munich

The plans within the CSU to create its own institution for political education began in 1964. The other parties with parliamentary group status in the German Bundestag already had comparable institutions at that time.

In April 1965, the CSU state executive decided to establish the Hanns Seidel Foundation, named after the former CSU chairman and Bavarian Prime Minister Hanns Seidel . On November 7, 1966, the founding meeting took place in Munich with 21 people close to the CSU. The entry in the register of associations took place on April 11, 1967. Fritz Pirkl , Bavarian State Minister for Labor and Social Affairs, was elected as the first chairman .

Under the motto “In the service of democracy, peace and development”, the foundation was given the statutory goal of promoting the “democratic and civic education of the German people on a Christian basis”. This idea was specified in the new version of the statutes of July 14, 2017 with "based on Christian value orientation and the image of man derived from it". The purpose of the foundation is, in particular, civic education, imparting political orientation and encouraging civic engagement. The educational institute founded as a department took over the imparting of civic knowledge. With the Academy for Politics and Current Affairs, a forum for the promotion of science and scientific policy advice was created as a further department, which was supposed to develop political concepts and strategies as a think tank .

Hanns Seidel Foundation, Munich

From 1969 the "Research Institute for Security, Strategy and International Issues" was also active, which later merged into the Institute for Foreign Relations and International Encounters and Cooperation. The operational goal was to promote "international attitudes and understanding between peoples as well as European unification".

In 1975 the Hanns Seidel Foundation opened the education center in Wildbad Kreuth as a tenant of the Wittelsbach family ; the lease for this conference building expired at the end of March 2016. In 1983 the Banz Abbey Education Center in Bad Staffelstein followed, and in 2001 the conference center was opened next to the foundation's headquarters in Munich's Lazarettstrasse.

In 1981, the foundation began awarding scholarships for studying in Germany through its funding agency. Since 1982, domestic students have also received ideal and financial support.

After Fritz Pirkl's death, Alfred Bayer was elected chairman in 1994 , followed in 2004 by the former Bavarian minister of culture, Hans Zehetmair . At the beginning of 2014, Zehetmair announced that he would not stand for another candidacy. The CSU chairman Horst Seehofer then proposed the deputy chairwoman Ursula Männle as Zehetmair's successor. She was elected chairman by the general assembly on May 12, 2014 and confirmed in office on July 30, 2018. In September 2019, she announced her resignation at the end of the year; her successor was long-term CSU European politician Markus Ferber from January 2020 .

The foundation has around 270 employees and an annual budget of around 66 million euros. It is active in development policy in over 60 countries, conducts seminars on political education and supports almost 1,300 talented and socially committed students from Germany and abroad, both ideally and financially.

organization

The former HSS training center Wildbad Kreuth

The number of members of the association is limited by statute to a maximum of 40 people. These elect a board consisting of a chairman, three deputies and the treasurer. The Secretary General is a member of the Executive Board by force. The chairman is Markus Ferber . Deputies are Christian Schmidt , Susanne Breit-Keßler and Kerstin Schreyer . Ingo Friedrich acts as treasurer . The general secretary is Oliver Jörg .

The Hanns Seidel Foundation is divided into six specialist departments and the Central Tasks department with several groups. In addition to the Banz Monastery Education Center, the Munich Conference Center at the Foundation's headquarters and representative offices in Berlin, Brussels, Athens, Washington and Moscow, it also has around 50 foreign offices.

The Academy for Politics and Current Affairs provides practical policy advice . It develops the basis for political decision-making and also conducts conferences and expert meetings. Attached to the academy is the Archive for Christian Social Policy , which serves as the central archive of the CSU as well as persons and institutions close to the party.

The Institute for Political Education (formerly: Bildungswerk ) promotes democratic and civic education in broad sections of the population. By organizing seminars and conferences in Kloster Banz , Munich as well as decentralized throughout Bavaria, the political participation of the citizens should be increased and they should be empowered to help shape the free, democratic constitutional state. This applies in particular to local politicians who can acquire the “tools” for their voluntary mandate in seminars.

The Institute for the Gifted (formerly Förderungswerk ) awards as academically gifted students and doctoral students German universities and colleges who are talented and at the same time suitable socio-politically engaged and personally scholarships from state resources. In addition, a program to promote young journalists (JNF) is offered. The foundation is also a member of MedienCampus Bayern , the Bavarian umbrella organization for media education and training. The foundation operates a fully equipped, modern radio and television studio at Kloster Banz.

Banz Monastery

The Institute for International Cooperation (IIZ) controls development cooperation projects . The work focuses on strengthening civil society, overcoming social and ethnic tensions, decentralization, promoting the rule of law and good governance, promoting women and exchanges on development policy in Germany.

Today, the IIZ oversees around 80 projects spread across the regions of North Africa, the Near and Middle East, Africa south of the Sahara, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia and China / Mongolia. In 2019, more than 245,000 participants took part in over 5,000 events in the field of development policy.

The Institute for European and Transatlantic Dialogue is responsible for the international contacts of the Hanns Seidel Foundation to the USA, Canada, Russia, Western, Central and Southeastern Europe, as well as to NATO and the EU. The focus of the work is the maintenance of international relations on a bilateral and multilateral level and the expansion and deepening of contacts with governments, parliaments and civil society organizations. Particular attention is paid to the transatlantic dialogue and European integration.

Foundation purpose

As a foundation that is close to the CSU, the Hanns Seidel Foundation sees itself as active on the basis of Christian value orientation and the image of man derived from it. According to Section 2 of the Articles of Association (as of 2019 version), it fulfills its purposes in particular by:

  • provides civic education, gives political orientation and enables judgment,
  • promotes civic engagement through seminars, events and publications,
  • conducts scientific studies on socially relevant topics,
  • the foundations for political action are developed through political analysis,
  • researches and archives the historical development of political and social movements,
  • promotes the scientific education and training of talented and suitable people from home and abroad,
  • supports European unification efforts and contributes to international understanding,
  • supports the creation of decent living conditions in the world with development cooperation projects and
  • contributes to the development of democratic and constitutional structures that are committed to human rights.
  • offers its own cultural events and exhibitions.

Prices

The Hanns Seidel Foundation awards prizes to promote special achievements in various areas. The sponsorship award for young song poets has been awarded to songwriters since 1987 as part of the songs on a summer evening (since 2017 for the “Lieder auf Banz”), “Die Raute” for the best German school newspaper editors.

In addition, the foundation awards the Franz Josef Strauss Prize at irregular intervals to “personalities who are outstandingly committed to peace, freedom and justice, to democracy and international understanding, or who have made special merits in the fields of business, science and technology as well as literature and art. ”Previous winners include Helmut Kohl , Roman Herzog , Michail Gorbatschow , José María Aznar , George Bush sen. , Henry Kissinger , Jean-Claude Juncker and GDR dissident Reiner Kunze .

In 2015, the Bavarian SPD parliamentary group chairman , Markus Rinderspacher , called for the Franz Josef Strauss Prize to be revoked from the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban . Rinderspacher cited "Orban's attacks on basic democratic principles and the solidarity principles of the European community of values" as the reason. Orban was awarded in 2001. In 2020, Rinderspacher renewed his demand. The occasion was Orban's controversial law to restrict the rights of the Hungarian parliament in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic .

From 1984 to 2012 the folk music prize was awarded a total of 428 times during the “Day of Folk Music” in Wildbad Kreuth and Banz Monastery. The award was stopped in mid-November 2012 after the media reported that the couple who founded the award, Maria and Max Wutz, had a close relationship with National Socialism, which had not been known until then. The foundation then commissioned the Institute for Contemporary History with an independent expert opinion. The result was so clear that the foundation, which had "assumed the inheritance in good faith", divided the total inheritance of around 1.4 million euros as follows: 1.25 million went to the Bayerischer Jugendring in support of the Bavarian Israeli youth and school exchange, 150,000 euros went to the Bavarian Memorials Foundation for the establishment of a memorial site in the former Dachau subcamp Mühldorfer Hart .

Chairperson

Members

Numerous personalities belong to the Hanns Seidel Foundation, including Edmund Stoiber , Theo Waigel (retired), Horst Seehofer , Erwin Huber , Wilfried Scharnagl (deceased), Angelika Niebler , Joachim Herrmann, Barbara Stamm , Günther Beckstein and Friedrich Zimmermann (deceased), Ingo Friedrich , Alois Glück , Markus Ferber , Markus Söder , Kerstin Schreyer , Ilse Aigner , Gerda Hasselfeldt , Susanne Breit-Keßler , Alexander Dobrindt , Joachim Herrmann , Thomas Kreuzer , Dorothee Bär , Christian Bernreiter , Markus Blume , Florian Herrmann , Elke Mack , Hans Reichart , Thomas Silberhorn , Johanes Singhammer , Barbara Stamm, Isabell Welpe

Publications

The Hanns Seidel Foundation operates a website at hss.de, is also active on the social media channels Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram and publishes its own publications that can also be downloaded from the website. There are the series Political Studies , Current Analyzes , Argumentation Compact and guides on association work and local politics and series-independent publications such as a collection of index cards on Europe. The foundation's podcast series are new: Punctuation marks (focus on media), #factual (scientific format).

literature

  • Hanns Seidel Foundation (ed.): Annual reports . since 1982. ( Annual reports online from 2010 ).
  • Hanns Seidel Foundation (publisher): 50 years of the Hanns Seidel Foundation . Hanns Seidel Foundation, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-88795-525-0 ( hss.de [PDF]).
  • Hanns Seidel Foundation (Ed.): In the service of democracy, peace and development - 40 years of the Hanns Seidel Foundation . Munich 2007.
  • Hanns Seidel Foundation (publisher): 30 years of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Wildbad Kreuth. A documentation . Munich 2005.
  • Hanns Seidel Foundation (publisher): 25 years of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in Banz Monastery . Munich 2008.
  • Burkhard Haneke: Ideas, impulses, initiatives. 25 years of the Hanns Seidel Foundation; 1967–1992 in the service of democracy, peace and development . Munich 1992.
  • Ulrich Heisterkamp Think Tanks of the Parties? A comparative analysis of the German political foundations , Wiesbaden 2014.
  • Philipp W. Hildmann: Thinking ahead, thinking along, thinking. Scientific policy advice as a mandate from political foundations . In: A. Katarina Weilert, Philipp W. Hildmann (Eds.): Ethische Politikberatung , Baden-Baden 2012, pp. 201–223.
  • Svetlana V. Pogorelskaja: The political foundations in German foreign policy. Considerations using the example of the activities of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Hanns Seidel Foundation in the Community of Independent States and in the Baltic States . Bonn 1997.
  • Michael Sikora: Political foundations - vita activa of party politics or vita contemplativa of political knowledge? . Bochum 1997.
  • Hans Zehetmair (Ed.): The future needs conservatives . (Lectures from the series of events of the same name by the Hanns Seidel Foundation). Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-451-30295-4 .

Web links

Commons : Hanns Seidel Foundation  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c statutes of the Hanns Seidel Foundation. (PDF) In: hss.de. December 28, 2019, accessed February 27, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Heiner Effern, Wolfgang Wittl: How the CSU lost the battle for Kreuth. sueddeutsche.de, July 13, 2015, accessed on July 14, 2015 .
  3. ^ Christian Deutschländer: Ursula Männle is supposed to lead the Hanns Seidel Foundation. In: merkur.de. Retrieved February 28, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Ursula Männle new chairwoman of the Hanns Seidel Foundation (PDF) May 12, 2014. Accessed May 14, 2014.
  5. ↑ Hanns Seidel Foundation: General Assembly elects MEP Markus Ferber unanimously as the new Chairman of the Hanns Seidel Foundation (from 1.1.2020) , October 21, 2019
  6. ↑ Bayrischer Rundfunk: Oliver Jörg becomes the new Secretary General of the Hanns Seidel Foundation , March 28, 2019 , accessed on March 29, 2019.
  7. ↑ Orban is to be revoked the Franz Josef Strauss Prize. Die Welt, September 4, 2015, accessed September 4, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Orban is to be revoked the Franz Josef Strauss Prize. BR24, September 4, 2015, accessed September 4, 2015 .
  9. ^ Orban withdraw the Franz Josef Strauss Prize. Frankfurter Rundschau, March 31, 2020, accessed on March 31, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Christine Schröpf: SPD calls for CSU to distance itself from Orban. Mittelbayerische Zeitung, March 31, 2020, accessed on March 31, 2020 .
  11. ↑ CSU-affiliated foundation finances price from Nazi assets - SPIEGEL ONLINE. In: spiegel.de. November 10, 2012, accessed February 28, 2019 .
  12. ^ Hanns Seidel Foundation gives up Nazi legacy - Bavaria - Süddeutsche.de. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 29, 2013. Retrieved February 28, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Albert A. Feiber: Useful proximity to Hitler. The couple Max and Maria Wutz in the network “Alter Kämper” - A report by the Institute for Contemporary History , in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 61st year, issue 4, October 2013, pp. 567–581. doi: 10.1515 / vfzg.2013.0025 . The full report is online (397 kB) available
  14. ↑ Albert A. Feiber: Useful proximity to Hitler. The couple Max and Maria Wutz in the network “Alter Kämper” - A report by the Institute for Contemporary History , in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , 61st year, issue 4, October 2013, pp. 567–581, here p. 581.
  15. ↑ Wutz's estate finds a new purpose. (PDF) press release. In: hss.de. Hanns Seidel Foundation and Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture, Science and Art, February 17, 2014, accessed on February 28, 2019 .
  16. ^ Bavarian-Israeli educational cooperation: Bayerischer Jugendring. In: www.bjr.de. February 18, 2014, archived from the original on October 30, 2014 ; accessed on February 28, 2019 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 9 ′ 9.8 ″  N , 11 ° 32 ′ 50.2 ″  E