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The Hertie Foundation is a German foundation based on the life's work of Georg Karg, the owner of Hertie Waren- und Kaufhaus GmbH, who died in 1972. The name Hertie is derived from the name Hermann Tietz, financier and member of the Jewish Tietz family of entrepreneurs who founded the department stores in 1882. Today, the Hertie Foundation is one of the largest ideologically independent and entrepreneurially unbound foundations in Germany. Annette Schavan is the chairwoman of the board.

Fields of activity

The work of the Hertie Foundation focuses on two main topics: Studying the Brain and Strengthening Democracy.

Exploring the brain

In its field of activity “Studying the Brain”, the Hertie Foundation focuses on the functioning of the brain and the fight against its diseases. The main focus is on the funding of clinical brain research and projects in the field of basic research, as well as the promotion of young scientists. Examples of funding and projects include the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research and the Hertie Institute for AI in Brain Health, the Hertie Network of Excellence in Clinical Neuroscience and the Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize.

Strengthening Democracy

Debating, deciding in local government, managing projects professionally: the Hertie Foundation's initiatives impart knowledge and skills that are important in a democracy. The programs include the Hertie School, the START program, the Jugend debattiert project, MITWIRKEN and the Jugend entscheidet project.

Foundation assets

The market value of the investment volume is around 1.2 billion euros (as of December 31, 2021). With an annual funding volume of between 20 and 25 million euros, the Hertie Foundation is one of the largest private foundations in Germany. Since 1998, there has been no longer any corporate ties.

Organization

Board of Trustees

The Chairman of the Board of Trustees is André Schmitz, Honorary Chairman  of the Schwarzkopf Foundation; the Deputy Chairman is Andreas Barner, member of the Society Committee of C.H. Boehringer Sohn AG & Co. KG. Michael Endres was appointed Honorary Chairman.

Further members of the Board of Trustees

• Maximilian Benz, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern German Literature at Bielefeld University
• Maria Böhmer, former Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office, President of the German UNESCO Commission
• Nikolaus von Bomhard, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Munich Reinsurance Company
• Helge Braun, former Federal Minister
• Onur Güntürkün, Professor of Biopsychology at the Ruhr University Bochum
• Emily Haber, former ambassador
• Nico Hofmann, Nico Hofmann Film - Consulting & Development
• Patrizia Nanz, President of the European University Institute
• Wolfgang Schön, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance
• Frank-Jürgen Weise, Former Chairman of the Board of the Hertie Foundation
• Otmar D. Wiestler, President of the Helmholtz Association, Berlin

Board of Directors

The board of directors manages and supervises the work of the foundation. The chairwoman is Annette Schavan, former federal minister, and the deputy chairman is Frank Mattern, an independent business consultant and supervisory board member. Other board members are Sabine Gräfin von Norman, Sascha Spoun, president of the Leuphana University Lüneburg, and Karl von Rohr, chairman of the supervisory board of DWS Group GmbH & Co KGaA.  

Controversies

After the National Socialist seizure of power, the department store chain of the Jewish entrepreneurial family Tietz was aryanized and the managing owner family was pushed out of the company. The then newly appointed managing director and later owner Georg Karg then led the renamed “Hertie” company until the 1970s, expanded the department store chain and transferred the company to the non-profit Hertie Foundation.  

The Hertie Foundation's strategy for coming to terms with its Nazi past came under public criticism in 2020. Around 150 current and former students of the Hertie School in Berlin, as part of the Her.Tietz initiative, are calling for an “open and responsible reappraisal” of the foundation's history. In November 2020, the foundation announced that it had commissioned the Society for Corporate History to conduct a scientific reappraisal of the history of the foundation's assets.  

In December 2023, in collaboration with the Society for Corporate History, the economic historians Johannes Bähr and Ingo Köhler published their scientific study on the history of the Hertie department store group under National Socialism, entitled Persecuted, “Aryanized”, Redressed? How the Hermann Tietz Department Store Group Became Hertie. In their independent research, the authors address the questions about the “Aryanization” of the Hermann Tietz Group, which have remained unanswered for several decades, for the first time on the basis of extensive research and by evaluating previously unused source material, including the archive of the Tietz family at the Leo Baeck Institute New York and the document Karg'schen Familienstiftung. The study examines the anti-Semitic agitation against the owners of the Hermann Tietz Group, the “Aryanization” of their company assets, and the fate of the Tietz family after they were ousted from the company. In addition, the study also includes the development of the Hertie Group and the restitution proceedings in the post-war period until the 1970s. According to Bähr and Köhler, the greatest shortcoming of the Hertie Group in dealing with the Jewish victims until very recently was that – regardless of all legal and financial agreements – a moral responsibility for its entanglement with the Nazi regime was neglected.  

The authors presented the results of their research to the public on December 5, 2023 at the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. The book presentation was also attended by, among others, the lawyer Orna von Fürstenberg as a representative of the Jewish community, as well as descendants of the Tietz family.