Why are Germany’s big research funders based in Bonn?

A provisional capital, chosen by a narrow vote

After the Second World War, the western part of Germany needed a seat for its new institutions. On 10 May 1949, two days after adopting the Basic Law, the Parliamentary Council chose Bonn over Frankfurt in a secret ballot, by 33 votes to 29. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Council deliberately avoided the word “capital” and spoke of the “provisional seat of the federal bodies”. Many of Bonn’s supporters saw a relatively small city as fitting the provisional character the new state was meant to have; Frankfurt, central and economically strong, risked becoming permanent.

The first Bundestag reopened the question. On 3 November 1949 it confirmed Bonn as the provisional seat of parliament and government in a secret ballot, with 200 votes in favour. The two official sources we checked differ on the number of votes against: the Bundestag gives 179, the Federal Agency for Civic Education 176. The provisional status lasted a long time: in 1956 a halt was even put on federal construction in Bonn so as not to make the city’s role look permanent, and it was only in his government statement of 18 January 1973 that Chancellor Willy Brandt recognised Bonn as the federal capital.

Three funders in five years

The research funders arrived in exactly these years. In 1949 the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft, founded in Berlin in 1920, was re-established in Bonn on the initiative of universities, the Stifterverband and the education ministries of the states, and its head office moved to Bad Godesberg. Until then the organisation had been a Berlin institution: it had offices in the Berlin Palace until 1935 and later on Grunewaldstraße, and in 1945, after American troops occupied that building, its head office moved to Berlin-Lichterfelde. In 1951 it merged with the German Research Council to form today’s DFG. Its history is told on The German Research Foundation.

The DAAD, founded in Heidelberg in 1925 and dissolved in 1945, was refounded in Bonn in 1950, on the initiative of the British military administration. The present Humboldt Foundation was established by the Federal Republic on 10 December 1953, with its headquarters in Bonn-Bad Godesberg; Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the deed of foundation. For a few years the two exchange organisations were even led by the same person: the head of the DAAD, Ruth Ziervogel-Tamm, initially also led the new Humboldt Foundation.

Myth or fact: “they came because Bonn was the capital”

The timing makes the connection plausible, and the DFG and DAAD pages place their moves in the post-war years in which Bonn became the seat of government. But neither the DFG’s history of its buildings nor the DAAD’s own account states that the move happened because Bonn was the capital. The DAAD names a specific actor, the British military administration, and the DFG names the universities, the Stifterverband and the state ministries that re-established it. The Humboldt Foundation was founded by the federal state itself, which was then governed from Bonn.

So the careful answer is this: the funders settled in Bonn in the same years in which Bonn became the seat of government; the sources do not record a single decision that “science goes to Bonn”. Whatever the reasons, by the mid-1950s the organisations were there to stay. The DFG built its central administration building in 1954, and the DAAD and DFG are now neighbours on Kennedyallee.

1991: parliament leaves, science stays

On 20 June 1991 the Bundestag voted by 338 to 320 to move to Berlin. The same resolution gave Bonn a new task: to take on new functions and institutions of national and international importance. The Berlin/Bonn Act of 26 April 1994 turned this into law. Among its aims it lists the preservation and promotion of political functions in the federal city of Bonn in several policy areas, the first of which is “education and science, culture, research and technology, telecommunications”. Its section on compensating the region names Bonn as a location for science, alongside culture, development policy and international institutions.

The law also keeps federal ministries in both cities. According to the Federal Agency for Civic Education, six federal ministries still have their primary seat in Bonn. The research ministry, now the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, lists two seats, in Bonn and in Berlin. The UN came too: the UN flag was raised in Bonn on 20 June 1996, and the UN climate change secretariat moved to the city the same year, as described on City & Region.

What it looks like today

As a result, one city is home to the DFG, which funds research projects at German universities; the DAAD, with its programmes for students and researchers; the Humboldt Foundation, which brings researchers from all over the world to Germany; and the German Space Agency at DLR, which plans the national space programme and manages Germany’s contributions to ESA, described on Germany’s space programme.

The city also hosts the decisions of programmes run from elsewhere: the Excellence Commission, for example, met in Bonn on 22 May 2025 to select Germany’s clusters of excellence, a process explained in What is Germany’s Excellence Strategy, and how are clusters of excellence chosen?