The lecture outlines the course of recent medieval foundation research with reference to the author's own work. As stepstones, he identifies the departure to social-historical foundation research in the 1980s and the transition to universal foundation history since the turn of the millennium. Finally, the speaker addresses the ever-virulent criticism of foundations and more recent theses on foundation theory.

In this talk, I will sketch various bodies of thought and evidence bearing upon the topics of giving (charity, donation, etc.; Skt dāna, Chn/Jpn 布施 etc.) and endowment in the Buddhist Tradition, and in Buddhist Studies as a field of scholarship. I will touch upon relevant background in various domains of Buddhist doctrine and thought, practice, and history. My aim will be to suggest various avenues of research into these questions which might be fruitful and interesting from a comparative and theory-building perspective.

Whether foundations in Byzantium can also be described as a "total social phenomenon" that affected all areas of society, whether in politics, religion, economics or in the family sphere, as Michael Borgolte has postulated for the Western Middle Ages and as seems to be true for the Islamic world as well, has not yet been sufficiently investigated. In the lecture, however, it will be shown that also in Byzantium foundations served very different religious, political, economic and social purposes. The focus will be on the social significance of foundations, especially in the Middle Byzantine period (8th-12th century), and on the ways in which foundations contributed to the establishment or consolidation of social relations in Byzantium.

Unfortunately, the lecture had to be cancelled.

Ancient Egypt is one of the most intriguing and archetypal cultures of Ancient history. The main reason for its outstanding achievements was a very efficient, capable economy, able to deal with the production and distribution of huge amounts of goods, which had to be procured according to the needs of a complex culture. The early ancient Egyptian state can be described as a strongly centralized, complex, political and cultural organism operating on a number of levels, with the king at the top and his closest officials as his assistants. The state was responsible (in the name of the king) for collecting the resources in order to support the royal court and its projects. Large-scale constructions were the major output of the state administration, including not only the agricultural activities but also some "non-profitable" ideologically determined projects such as building the monumental royal tombs. The so-called Royal funerary domains represented special types of state establishments, which played an important role in the economic system of the Old Kingdom. These domains were originally founded by kings in order to provide, among others, for the construction workers of his pyramids and other royal construction projects, as well as priests and servants conducting the cult of the deceased ruler. The royal funerary domains foundations played also an important part in the integration of the country, the development of its infrastructure and the consolidation of its central government. They became an important instrument of what is known as the internal establishment of still only sporadically inhabited and economically unexploited land. The term “funerary domains” is used to designate their personification by female offering bearers carrying different commodities and leading various types of animals. Appearing in front of each figure was its name combined with the name of the king who found it.  Originally, these scenes have been attested in Old Kingdom royal funerary complexes, at the latest from the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty (2613-2494 BC), contained long sequences of personified processions of the royal funerary domains of the complex’s owner. These scenes played a very important role in the decorative program of royal tombs. Long processions of royal funerary domains also decorate the walls of Old Kingdom private tombs. They provide us, among other information, with valuable evidence concerning the period of time during which the domains were in use. A major addition to the evidence are the funerary domains from the causeway of Sahura the second king of the Fifth dynasty of the Old Kingdom in Abusir (2487–2475 BC). The reliefs came to light during the excavation in the pyramid complex of king Sahura which started in 1994 and continued from 2002 till 2020 .The exploration by the team has so far staged  scene listing a large number of Sahura’s funerary domains which helped us to initiate new debates about their meaning, function, as well as their position within the system of the Old Kingdom economy.

Ancient cities generally did not have a large budget available to them from the taxes and duties of citizens and non-citizen residents. Accordingly, the financial capacity and economic potency of individual citizens were central to the functioning of communities. They were also the ones who were mostly responsible for cult foundations by permanently financing priesthoods, setting up festivals, providing sacrificial animals, and ensuring the maintenance of temples. Foundations only lasted longer if they were financed by regular income - leasing land or granting loans against interest were a good basis for this. Whatever the details of the endowment, it tied up city resources in the long run, in that all the individual specifications of funding and endowment details of purpose had to be implemented by city magistrates. Numerous sanctions in Hellenistic and Roman texts indicate various kinds of negligence, if not unwillingness, in the implementation of the endowment by those in charge in the cities.

In the second half of the 19th century, debates in the Ottoman world converged on two legal forms associated with ideas that they could shape society. These are, on the one hand, foundations according to Islamic law and, on the other hand, the newly emerging idea of cooperatives, which is strongly influenced by European models. In my presentation, I would like to discuss the question of why and in what forms the cooperative is becoming attractive in this period, while foundations are becoming more and more controversial. Therefore, I will look at the fundamental differences between the legal institutions and make a first attempt to relate the debates that are sparked by them.

Educational philanthropy has surged in India in recent years, rivaling other popular areas of charitable giving. In this presentation, I trace the roots of this consequential development to the colonial period when “English education” was widely touted as a preeminent “gift” of the British to their vast empire. Yet, remarkably and from the start, the so-called British gift was critically supplemented by “native” monetary contributions, despite the growing colonial stranglehold on power and capital. Indeed, British India’s most important educational institutions would surely not have emerged but for Indian capital and initiative. British India thus saw the precocious development of what would become the global phenomenon of “public-private partnership” in educational philanthropy. At the same time, I argue that giving for secular education amongst wealthy Indians was itself the practice of a “strange kindness.” Until the arrival of colonial modernity, learning in India was largely confined to elite men of certain castes and communities, and it was rarely disconnected from sacral and theological ends. Such learning was also the focus of elite giving, itself seen as a religious obligation, hence also a means of accruing otherworldly merit. Yet as “public education” is debated as a necessary good under the pressures of capitalist colonial modernity and anti-colonial politics, a corresponding shift in philanthropic practice ensues with secular learning progressively capturing the imagination of donors who directed their benevolence towards the teaching of total strangers. Today, education is frequently cited as the number one focus of giving for wealthy Indians. To donors and their recipients over the course of India’s colonial centuries, this would have seemed like a very strange proposition indeed. Yet such a shift does happen with critical consequences that are still unfolding in the world’s largest democracy.