Five Thousand Years of Foundations: A Typology from Mesopotamia to the usa

In: Endowment studies, Band 1, Heft 1, S. 60-95

Abstract

According to the written record, foundations can be traced back to roughly 3000bceand were found in Babylon and Egypt. They originally served the cult, or more precisely the nourishment, of the gods as well as the provision of ancestors in the post-mortal state. Beginning from the time of the so-called Axial Age, according to Karl Jaspers around the middle of the first millenniumbce, endowments involved people, that is the founder himself or beneficiaries designated by him in the spirit of philanthropy. The monotheistic religions of the Near East, which in this respect were perhaps influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism, developed an extremely successful type of foundation, namely the foundation for the salvation of the soul. This appeared alongside or replaced the older foundations for the soul, which were essentially meant to support one's continuing survival in the afterlife and aimed at an enhanced and blissful form of existence through the mercy of or closeness to God. The second universal historical caesura for foundations was brought about by modernity, by removing the religiously-motivated motivation for the lasting purpose of the endowment. The "operative" or "provisional endowments" of the present, essentially an American innovation, have parted ways with a millennia-old interpretation, in order to meet the requirements of inexorable societal and cultural change.