Francke Foundations

The Francke Foundations (Franckesche Stiftungen), also known as Glauchasche Anstalten in Halle, were founded in 1695 as a Christian, social and educational work by August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), a Pietist, theologian and university professor in Halle, Germany. Francke Foundations are today a modern educational cosmos closely connected with their history. The Francke Foundations are on the German proposal list as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999.

In the former outskirts of Halle, in Glaucha, August Hermann Francke established a school for the deprived and orphan children and elaborated an extensive, religiously motivated schooling and educational concept and started, at first without a steady income and without capital, to build up social-educational institutions for each class of society. Within only 30 years, Francke Foundations (Franckesche Stiftungen) developed, favoured and protected by the Elector of Brandenburg and King of Prussia through privileges, into a unique school city with a teacher training institution, business enterprises such as a pharmacy, a publishing house and scientific collections.

Today Francke Foundations feel bound to a double heritage: the responsibility for the salvation and lasting preservation of the building ensemble and the historical collections as well as the task of continuing the ideas and traditions of their founder into the future. Since the revival of the Foundations in 1992 institutions, which have close connections to Francke's ideas and work, have been settled into the historical buildings. With their 40 partner institutions the Foundations are today a unique centre of cultural, scientific, educational, social and Christian institutions, a complex with three kindergartens, children’s creativity centre, four schools, a House of Generations, a youth workshop, a bible centre, traditional commercial enterprises, archives, libraries, museums, university and non-university research facilities and much more. Today more than 4,000 people learn, teach, work and live in the Francke Foundations.

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