Since its establishment in 1967, the Hanns Seidel Foundation has assumed the mission of supporting the “democratic and civic education of the German people on Christian foundations,” to quote its statutes. It was named after the Bavarian prime minister and chairman of the Christian-Social Union, who was active in Bavarian and German politics from the first years after WWII until his untimely death in 1961. The work of the Hanns Seidel Foundation is guided by the idea that democracy needs political education, which represented a top priority in the postwar Federal Republic of Germany. Ever since its beginnings, the foundation has expanded its activities throughout the entire world, under the motto “in the service of democracy, peace, and development.” After the collapse of communism in East-Central Europe, the foundation involved itself in the process of democratic consolidation and European integration by establishing branches in countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. It has also supported the countries of the ex-Yugoslav space in their efforts to meet the criteria for European integration. In Romania, the Hanns Seidel Foundation has been supporting institutional reforms and civil society projects since 1992. For more on this, see https://www.hss.de/en/; http://www.hss.ro/.
