Wilhelm Krull has been secretary-general of the Volkswagen Foundation – Germany’s largest foundation dedicated to promoting sciences and humanities at home and abroad – since 1996. The foundation is the principal beneficiary of car manufacturer Volkswagen, but enjoys independence from the company by selling and reinvesting its assets. According to Krull, “The funding programme seeks to serve cross-disciplinary cooperation and relevant basic research at all times.” The goal is to “overcome the prevailing speechlessness between the traditional disciplines”. Approximately 100 million euros per annum are available for this purpose.

Instead of becoming a research sponsor, Wilhelm Krull almost became a researcher himself. After studying German, education and political science in Bremen and Marburg, he was awarded his PhD in 1980 at the age of 28. His dissertation dealt with the Political Prose of Expressionism, the prevailing art movement of the early 20th century.

After graduating, Wilhelm Krull was a DAAD lecturer at the University of Oxford, UK, from 1980 to 1984. He then spent a year teaching and researching at the University of Bonn with a DAAD Postgraduate Scholarship. In the mid-1980s, Wilhelm Krull moved to the German Council of Science and Humanities, Germany’s main policy advisory body, where he was head of the Department for Research, International Affairs and Public Relations. In 1993 he moved to the general administration of the Max Planck Society (MPG) in Munich, where he was responsible for international relations, research policy and again public relations, until he was appointed secretary-general of the Volkswagen Foundation two years later.

Krull’s career – from the DAAD, the German Council of Science and Humanities and the MPG to the Volkswagen Foundation – exemplifies how closely networked the major institutions of German education and research are and how they learn from and with each other by exchanging staff. Alongside his main job Wilhelm Krull has taken on many voluntary duties in national and international bodies and supports the foundation system in many ways. From 2008 until 2014 he chaired the Board of Directors of the Association of German Foundations. Before that he was chair of the European Foundation Centre (2006 to 2008) and of the Hague Club of the 25 largest European foundations (2003 to 2005). In July 2009 he was awarded the title of honorary senator of the University of Konstanz in honour of his achievements as University Council Chair. In 2010 Krull was awarded the State Prize of Lower Saxony, and in June 2012 he received an honorary professorship from the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University, St Louis.