Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation


Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation or Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung is an independent foundation in Germany with the goal of promoting the sciences. It is named after Carl Friedrich von Siemens and was founded in 1958 by Ernst von Siemens. Its Managing Director is currently Heinrich Meier.
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.

History

, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG 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 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 the Third Reich. Speakers were Among others Knut Borchardt, Paul Carell, Hellmut Diwald and Christian Meier. 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.
In 1980, the historian Ernst Nolte gave a lecture at the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation entitled Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus, which the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published, thus triggering the Historikerstreit, the so called historians' dispute.

The foundation under Heinrich Meier from 1985

Today the foundation has the following priorities:
Some speakers who have given lectures at the Foundation includes Jan Assmann, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Jean Bollack, J. M. Coetzee, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Philippe Descola, Louis Dumont, Ronald Dworkin, Ágnes Heller, Paul Kirchhof, Jean-François Lyotard, Peter von Matt, Ernst Mayr, Ilya Prigogine, Martin Rees, Karl Schlögel, Wolf Singer, Andreas Urs Sommer and Helen Vendler. Some of the lectures are published in the series Themen der Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung.
Numerous experts on right-wing extremism, such as Peter Glotz 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.