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The Week in Germany: Current Affairs

March 2, 2007

German Political Foundations: The Hanns Seidel Stiftung

The Hanns Seidel Foundation's Munich headquarters.

This week, TWIG begins a series introducing five key German political foundations with offices in Washington. Each of the five foundations is affiliated with a particular political party in Germany, although their wide-ranging public policy and humanitarian-related activities go far beyond mere party politics. They are akin to think tanks in the United States in some, but not all, ways. We begin with a text introducing the Munich-based Hanns Seidel Foundation, which is affiliated with the center-right Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavaria-based sister party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In German politics the CDU/CSU are often perceived as one political force acting together at national level. The smaller CSU, however, is a separate political party with strong regional roots in the southern state of Bavaria, where it has ruled the roost for the past half century.

The German Hanns Seidel Foundation, headed by Dr. Hans Zehetmair, is a political non-profit organization closely affiliated with Germany's ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) party.

The CSU is Europe's most successful democratic party in terms of electoral results and political longevity. It has held an absolute majority in Bavaria's State Parliament for more than five decades and is currently part of Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing "Grand Coalition" in Berlin. Named after Hanns Seidel, a prominent CSU party co-founder and former Bavarian Minister-President, the Munich-based Hanns Seidel Foundation has an annual budget of about $55 million and maintains 90 projects in 50 countries around the world to fulfill its mission "in the service of democracy, peace, and development".

DC Director Ulf Gartzke

The Hanns Seidel Foundation's Washington Office was founded in 1989 and is conveniently located on Capitol Hill, in close proximity to the U.S. Senate. Since June 2004, the office is headed by Ulf Gartzke, who first came to the U.S. capital in 1998 to study at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. The Hanns-Seidel-Foundation's Washington Office is committed to working with interested partners across the political spectrum to promote strong German-American and transatlantic ties.

The Washington Office has several key objectives:

• To reach out to the US administration, Congress, multilateral organizations (World Bank, IMF, etc.), the business community, think tanks, academia, and the media to deepen the German-American partnership and transatlantic cooperation

• To facilitate high-level political meetings and dialogue between German and American decision makers on a wide range of political, security, economic, cultural, and other issues

• To organize conferences, workshops, and roundtable discussions with German-American political leaders, government officials, academics, journalists, etc. on relevant transatlantic and European issues

• To engage with influential foreign policy professionals by providing key staffers from leading Senate and House offices the opportunity to participate in the annual Hanns-Seidel-Memorial-Fellowship program in Munich, Brussels, and Berlin

• To provide relevant, up-to-date assessments and analyses of current US foreign and domestic policy for the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation and CSU party leadership

• To inform current public debates on German-American and transatlantic relations through the regular publication of articles, editorials, and interviews in relevant German, American, and Canadian news media

Dr. Zehetmair

CSU leaders who regularly travel to Washington for political consultations include, among others, German Economics Minister Michael Glos, CSU Bundestag Leader Dr. Peter Ramsauer, Deputy German Defense Minister Christian Schmidt, as well as the CDU/CSU Spokesman on the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

The Berlin-based Bundestag is Germany's national parliament. All five political parties behind the five foundations to be presented in our special series are represented in the Bundestag.

The Banz Monastery is one of the Foundation's picturesque educational centers in Bavaria. Another is located at a former spa called Wildbad Kreuth.

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