Hanns Seidel Foundation

The CSU began planning to create its own institution for political education in 1964. At that time, the other parties with faction status in the German Bundestag already had comparable institutions. 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. Fritz Pirkl, Bavarian Minister of State for Labour and Social Affairs, was elected as the first chairman.

In 1975, the foundation opened the educational centre in Kreuth as a tenant of the Wittelsbach family. The lease for this conference building expired at the end of March 2016. In 1983, the educational centre at the Banz Abbey in Bad Staffelstein followed, and in 2001, a conference centre was opened next to the headquarters in Munich.

In 1981, the foundation began awarding scholarships for foreign students in Germany through its funding agency. Since 1982, domestic students have also received scholarships. The foundation also has a PhD scholarship program, where recipients who are working on their doctoral thesis receive additional funding for research and receive a monthly payment of 1,450 EUR. Students and doctoral candidates that are funded by the foundation scholarships are those with above-average academic achievements both socially and politically.

After Fritz Pirkl's death, Alfred Bayer was elected chairman in 1994, followed by former Bavarian Minister of Education Hans Zehetmair in 2004. In 2014, CSU chairman Horst Seehofer proposed the deputy chairwoman Ursula Männle as Zehetmair's successor. She was elected chairwoman by the general meeting on 12 May 2014 and was re-elected on 30 July 2018. In September 2019, she announced her resignation. Her successor in 2020 was Markus Ferber, a long-standing CSU MEP.

The foundation has around 270 employees and an annual budget of around €66 million. It is active in over 60 countries and provides funding to almost 1,300 students from Germany and abroad every year.