The Volkswagen Foundation is an independent foundation incorporated under private law with registered office in Hanover. Its overall funding volume of around 150 million euros per year makes it Germany‘s largest private research funding foundation, and indeed one of the country’s largest foundations altogether. The Foundation provides funds only to academic institutions. Since 1962, the Volkswagen Foundation has allocated more than 5.1 billion euros in support of over 33,000 projects. It is thereby one of the largest common benefit foundations under private law in all of Germany.

The European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg is a cutting-edge research facility and will be inaugurated in summer 2017. The European XFEL´s technology can be used to take three-dimensional images of the nanocosmos, film chemical processes and elucidate molecular structures, for instance in biomolecules, viruses, and cells – all with a previously inconceivable brilliance. The Volkswagen Foundation launched a funding initiative in 2010 – the Peter Paul Ewald Fellowships – to prepare the next generation of scientists for application of this groundbreaking technology.

The Volkswagen Foundation funds scientific events held at Herrenhausen Palace. Funding is not restricted to any specific field or topic. Prerequisites for a successful application are the development of new research ideas and the discussion of previously unexplored topics and approaches as well as an international and interdisciplinary context and the participation of young researchers.