The Heinrich Böll Foundation, affiliated with Germany's Alliance 90/The Greens party, emerged in 1997 from a merger of three predecessor groups: Buntstift in Göttingen, Frauen-Anstiftung in Hamburg, and an earlier Heinrich Böll entity in Cologne. This consolidation, approved at a Greens party convention in Mainz in March 1996, embedded priorities like gender democracy, migration issues, and anti-discrimination efforts against LGBTQ+ people into its statutes. Named after writer Heinrich Böll (1917-1985), it opened in Berlin's Hackesche Höfe on July 1, 1997, and relocated to its current energy-efficient headquarters at Schumannstraße 8 in Berlin-Mitte in 2008.
Headquartered in Berlin with offices in all 16 German states and 30 international branches across four continents—starting with Prague in 1990, followed by Pakistan (1993), Turkey and Cambodia (1994), and others—the foundation supports about 1,200 students annually through scholarships, adding up to 250 new recipients each year.
Its activities span ecology, democracy, gender justice, and human rights. Recent events include a December 2025 talk on infrastructure investment hurdles, a January 2026 "Green Week" critiquing agribusiness lobbying via its Konzernatlas 2026 and hosting a post-demonstration gathering, and a January 29 foreign policy conference on hybrid threats like cyberattacks and resilience strategies. Leaders Imme Scholz and Jan Philipp Albrecht host podcasts debating these topics.[148 words]