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Aby Warburg Foundation

The Aby-Warburg-Stiftung is a foundation under German civil law; the chair of its board of directors is the Minister of Science and Learning of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The purpose of the foundation is to promote scholarship in Hamburg. It funds the Warburg professorship and places a special emphasis on the promotion of lectures at the Warburg Haus. To this end, it holds conferences, seminars, and symposia in the reading room of the Warburg Haus, which has been allocated to the foundation for such purposes. Lectures also form a central part of the scholarship programme, which is funded by the foundation. The foundation invites acclaimed researchers in the humanities and social sciences to take part in order to make their work known to a wider audience.

A further part of the foundation’s mission is to offer temporary research residencies to outstanding scholars from all over the world, providing both living quarters and study areas at the Warburg Haus, and thus giving them the opportunity to undertake in-depth research and to benefit from the exchange of knowledge with their colleagues in Hamburg. The results of the research undertaken in Hamburg are then presented to the public through lectures given by the ‘Warburg professors’. The Wissenschaftspreis of the Aby Warburg Foundation continues the tradition of the former Warburg Library of Cultural Studies. It is awarded to scholars who are working on pertinent topics in the fields of art history, cultural studies, or the humanities.

An international council of renowned scholars from the humanities and social sciences supports the foundation’s board in the selection and recruitment of guest professors and scholarship candidates as well as with the classification and evaluation of their academic achievements. In addition to the programme of lectures, a further concern of the foundation is the ongoing publication of lectures and studies completed at or in cooperation with the Warburg Haus in order to make the research available to the public and to other scholars. The series ‘Warburg Haus Lectures’ and ‘Warburg Haus Studies’ ensure that the research and scholarly discussions that take place at the Warburg Haus reach a wider audience.

Hartmut Halfmeier is the manager of the Aby Warburg Foundation.