Thomas Adam publishes two new books on philanthropy

Thursday, Dec 01, 2016

Dr. Thomas Adam, the Department's specialist in German history and intercultural transfers, has recently published two new books on the history of philanthropy.

Philanthropy, Civil Society, and the State in German History, 1815-1989 (Camden House, 2016) introduces English-speaking readers to an emerging shift underway in German historiography in which German historians of Germany have come to see nineteenth- and twentieth-century German society as characterized by private initiative and a vibrant civil society. Public institutions such as museums, high schools, universities, hospitals, and charities relied heavily on the support of wealthy donors. State funding for universities and high schools, for instance, accounted only for a fragment of the operating costs of those institutions, while private endowments running into the millions of marks funded scholarships as well as health care for teachers and students. Private support for public institutions was essential for their existence and survival: it was the backbone of Germany's civil society. This book is, thus, the first to provide English-speaking readers with this revisionist interpretation of the role of the state and philanthropy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany: a society in which private actors claimed responsibility for the common good and used philanthropic engagement to shape society according to their visions.

Transnational Philanthropy: The Mond Family’s Support for Public Institutions in Western Europe from 1890 to 1938 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016) explores the philanthropic activities of Ludwig Mond (1839-1909) and of his two sons Alfred and Robert in the field of art collecting, the fight against early childhood mortality, the advancement of research and of higher education, archaeological excavations in Egypt and Palestine, and for the founding of the State of Israel from the 1890s to the late 1930s. These activities resulted in the creation of the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, the donation of Ludwig Mond’s art collection to the National Gallery in London, the funding of the excavation of  the sacred Buchis Bulls at Armant in Egypt, the establishment of the Children’s Hospital in London, and the support of many natural science institutes and associations in England, France, Germany, and Italy.