The Puhl Foundation is a private charitable foundation constituted under civil law. The foundation was acknowledged by its regulatory authority, Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt, on July 3, 2015.
The members of the foundation’s board of directors are
Oliver Puhl, Alix Puhl, and Cornelia Thaler.
The Puhl Foundation was established in 2015 by Oliver and Alix Puhl, based on their desire to share with and to help others. The two founders also want to inspire others to follow their example.
The foundation’s mission is to compensate for disadvantages and promote opportunities for children, adolescents and young adults, including their families.
In June 2020, Emil, one of the founders’ four children, took his own life at the age of 16. Emil suffered from the effects of Asperger’s syndrome and a depression, which was diagnosed two months before his death and had most recently been exacerbated by the syndrome.
The lessons learned from Emil’s suffering have underpinned the foundation’s work ever since. Its focus is on suicide prevention as well as early diagnosis and help for sufferers of mental illness. This is supported by projects to improve the institutional conditions in the school system.
The foundation also focuses on supporting young artists during and after their studies at art schools.
Families and their environment should be spared the suicide of their child. It is therefore crucial that all those who work with young people are sufficiently familiar with suicide, its possible early warning signs and, above all, suicide prevention. This is the only way they can provide professional and emotional support to the children and young people entrusted to them and their families at an early stage. The knowledge and skills required for this are not yet part of teacher training in Germany. In the post-Corona period schools and teachers will be confronted even more than before with the consequences of psychological stress in children and adolescents, so that support is urgently needed here.
In cooperation with Judith Junk, a teacher from Rüsselsheim, the Puhl Foundation has developed a proposal for the establishment of a Suicide Prevention Coordination Office at the Hessian Ministry of Education with the intention to actively support Hessian schools in learning and living suicide prevention in everyday school life and beyond. In addition, the Hessian Teacher Training Act urgently needs to be expanded to include mental health issues and suicide prevention.
art.works.fra is a scholarship program for young art school graduates who want to stay in Frankfurt (or return there) for the first years of their artistic career. The program offers financial support for renting a suitable studio. Graduates of recognized German and international art colleges in the first three years after graduation are eligible to apply.
In June 2021, the Puhl Foundation launched art.works.fra, a joint project of individual Frankfurt residents and other foundations, as a long-term project. It is important to all supporters to enable young artists to start their careers in or around Frankfurt and to keep the cultural scene in the region alive and relevant.
The FeM Mädchenhaus (house for girls) combines the sectors girls’ refuge, girls’ counselling, online and chat counselling, girls’ meeting place, empowerment, protective housing and moBBI (mobile counselling and accompaniment for intervention in cases of violence for young women aged 18-21) under one institutional roof.
The Puhl Foundation has supported the work of FeM Mädchenhaus both ideally and materially since the foundation was established.
With the Deutschlandstipendium, the Federal Government supports talented and capable students. The scholarship amounts to € 300 per month for an initial period of one year. Half of this sum is provided by private sponsors such as companies, foundations, alumni and other private individuals. The other half is paid by the Federal Government. The universities take charge of the selection process and pay the stipend directly to the scholarship holders.
Since 2017, the Puhl Foundation has been supporting scholarship holders at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, HfMDK and the University of Fine Arts – Städelschule with several Deutschlandstipendien each year.
Sing Your Life is a project by a team of actors, musicians, students, pedagogues and parents for pupils at Frankfurt schools. The pupils report on their lives by first writing down what they like and dislike, what bothers them, what scares them and what gives them joy. The answers are used to compose songs that are played back to the classes, so that they can sing them, play them with instruments, create video clips from them, paint pictures to go with them…. A “rock pop rap soul opera” about the lives of young people in Frankfurt will be created around characters and a framework story. The opera is scheduled to premiere in 2022.
Together with the artist Sabine Fischmann, the singer and songwriter Ali Neander and many other supporters, the Puhl Foundation has launched Sing Your Life 2019 as a pilot project. It is important to all supporters to give pupils their own voice and visibility, without a given framework. Instead, we want to help the young people to develop and implement their own ideas autonomously. The project reaches across districts, schools and school forms.
The Michael Hauck Visiting Professorship for Interdisciplinary Holocaust Research is part of the Fritz Bauer Institute and offers scholars researching the history and impact of the Holocaust from a historical perspective the opportunity to come to Frankfurt for one semester. There they teach courses and give lectures at the History Department of the Goethe University and pursue their research projects at the Fritz Bauer Institute.
The visiting professorship is the result of a joint initiative by the founder’s father, the Frankfurt banker Michael Hauck (1927-2018), and his son-in-law Oliver Puhl. Knowing that almost 70 years after the end of the Holocaust there was still no full professorship for Holocaust research at a German university, the two Frankfurt citizens offered to finance a chair for the state of Hesse. Subsequently, the state of Hesse and the Goethe University decided to create a chair for research into the history and impact of the Holocaust, which was implemented in May 2017 with the appointment of Professor Sybille Steinbacher. The Michael Hauck Foundation and the recently established Puhl Foundation endowed the Visiting Professorship for Interdisciplinary Holocaust Research at the Fritz Bauer Institute to support this work. After Michael Hauck’s death, the visiting professorship was named after him. The current funding runs until 2023.
The non-profit tomoni mental health gGmbH was founded in June 2022 by Alix and Oliver Puhl together with the Puhl Foundation. The founders want to contribute to mental health being given a broader scope in everyday school life and beyond. After all, the earlier a mental illness is recognized, the greater the chance of dealing with it and being able to lead a contented life.
tomoni means “together” in Japanese. And that is what is all about.
The goal of tomoni mental health is the early detection of mental illnesses in children and adolescents as a prerequisite for a life worth living and a content life for all those affected. To this end, tomoni develops scientifically based, digital training and prevention programs.
Specifically, tomoni aims to provide support on three levels, bring about change and thus counteract the stigmatization of mental illness:
Our work is supported by tomoni’s scientific and educational advisory boards as well as by the game.changers, a group of committed adolescents and young adults, some of whom are affected themselves.
If you are interested in the work of the Puhl Foundation or individual projects, please feel free to contact us at frankfurt@puhl.foundation.
If you would like to support our work financially, we would be pleased to receive your transfer to the Foundation’s account:
Puhl Foundation
comdirect bank AG
Konto 8877987
BLZ 20041155
BIC COBADEHD055
IBAN DE18 2004 1155 0887 7987 00
Please include the address to which we may send the donation receipt under reason for transfer. If you wish to support a specific project of the Foundation with your donation, please indicate this.
The Puhl Foundation is a private charitable foundation constituted under civil law. The foundation was acknowledged by its regulatory authority, Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt, on July 3, 2015.
The members of the foundation’s board of directors are
Oliver Puhl, Alix Puhl, and Cornelia Thaler.
Puhl Foundation
Am Pilgerrain 17
61352 Bad Homburg v. d. Höhe
We are a foundation under civil law with legal capacity.
Address
Puhl Foundation
Am Pilgerrain 17
61352 Bad Homburg v. d. Höhe
+49 69 96861994
frankfurt@puhl.foundation
Responsible supervisory authority
Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt
Luisenplatz 2
64287 Darmstadt
Germany
Representation (responsible in the sense of press law)
The Foundation is legally represented by the members of the Board of Directors:
Oliver Puhl, Frankfurt am Main, Chairman
Alix Puhl, Frankfurt am Main, Deputy Chairperson
Cornelia Thaler, Bad Soden
Legal Entity Identifier (LEI)
3912004HY5HD6XTKO107
Bank account
comdirect bank AG
IBAN DE18200411550887798700
BIC COBADEHD055
Responsible for the content
Oliver Puhl
Chairman
Puhl Foundation
Am Pilgerrain 17
61352 Bad Homburg v. d. Höhe
Disclaimer
Despite careful control of the contents, we do not assume any liability for the contents of external links. The operators of the linked pages are solely responsible for their content.