Balancing Academic Sponsorship and Foreign Cultural Policy: an Interpretation of Five Decades of Humboldt Foundation Sponsorship Data

Abstract

When the present Humboldt Foundation was founded on 10 December 1953, it was the third time a sponsoring institution had been created in the tradition of the distinguished naturalist, universal genius and South America researcher. He thought it was so important to promote young academic talent that he financed promising young researchers from his own personal fortune. The first Alexander von Humboldt Foundation was established in 1860, a year after the death of its eponym, with the objective of sponsoring young German academics to travel abroad. After losing its capital in the great inflation and ceasing to function in 1923, it was re-established in 1925 with the aim of supporting the studies of foreign academics and doctoral students in Germany.