Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation

The Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation was established in New York on July 21, 1936, by Emil Schwarzhaupt.

The Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation was established in New York on July 21, 1936 by Emil Schwarzhaupt, a German immigrant who came to the United States in 1910 at the age of seventeen. Schwarzhaupt first worked as a salesman for several distilling firms in Chicago. In 1927 he helped to organize the American Medicinal Spirits Company and served on its board of directors until it was purchased by the National Distillers Products Corporation in 1930, when he became director and vice president of that corporation.

In 1933 Schwarzhaupt and Leo Gerngross acquired the Bernheimer Distilling Company in Louisville, KY. Schwarzhaupt became president of the firm and remained in that position after the company was purchased by Schenly Industries, Inc. Emil Schwarzhaupt retired in 1948 and died March 30, 1950.

Schwarzhaupt's interest in promoting an intelligent understanding of American citizenship among the foreign born led him to create the Foundation that bears his name and to bequeath a substantial share of his estate to its work. The bequest in his will resulted in the sale of 113,000 shares of the Bernheimer Company to Schenly Industries for about $3.6 million.

Schwarzhaupt had no intention of making a permanent institution of the Schwarzhaupt Foundation. He stated in his will:

"…any moneys, securities, other assets or property…all be expended within the period of 25 years from and after the date of my death. My reason for imposing the restriction and conditions…because of my conviction that in the long run society is benefited by having each generation solve its own problems and provide the necessary funds for so doing."

The initial group of trustees consisted of four friends of Schwarzhaupt: Leo Gerngross (first president), Adolph Hirsch, Hugo Sonnenschein and Frederick Lee. Schwarzhaupt's will stipulated that three years after his death three additional trustees were to be added to the board, "to be selected by the then presiding head of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the then acting head of the Federal Council of Churches of New York, and the then acting Rabbi of Temple Emanu-el of New York City."

After the bequests specifically stipulated in his will to family, friends, and a sizeable number of public and private institutions had been disbursed, the trustees of the Foundation were unsure how to proceed with the allocation of the remainder of the funds. Schwarzhaupt, as noted earlier, had suggested in his will that the Foundation's funds could be used to distribute materials on American citizenship to immigrants, to endow a university chair devoted to the study of American citizenship. But Schwarzhaupt did not make these suggestions binding upon the trustees. Adolph Hirsch, who became president of the Foundation after Gerngross's death in 1958, commented on this lack of direction by saying that he and Gerngross had asked Schwarzhaupt for more specific guidance. Schwarzhaupt replied that "if he had known, he would have set it down."

With the purpose of the Foundation unresolved, the trustees decided to meet with Professor Louis Wirth of the University of Chicago in 1951. Wirth was a professor of sociology who was interested in problems of civic leadership and training, especially as it related to urban areas. It was decided that Wirth and others in the department would apply to the Schwarzhaupt Foundation for funds to create a committee to study the theoretical problems of education and citizenship. The Foundation provided $25,300 to establish the Committee on Education for American Citizenship. Louis Wirth became chairman, and other committee members were Daniel Boorstin, Kermit Eby, Walter Johnson, Avery Leiserson, Bessie Louise Pierce, Kenneth J. Rehage, and Ralph W. Tyler.

The final recommendations of the Committee suggested that an advisory group "representing a diversity of backgrounds" be formed to review and evaluate grant applications. Instead, the trustees hired Carl Tjerandsen on a consulting basis in 1953 to review applications submitted to the Foundation and to make recommendations based on the Foundation's statement of purpose. Tjerandsen had helped organize an "Institute on Citizenship" at Kansas State College in the mid-1940s prior to attending graduate school at the University of Chicago where he worked with Professor Louis Wirth. It was as a graduate student that he worked with the Committee on Education for American Citizenship, and after the death of Professor Wirth was appointed by Dean Ralph Tyler as Executive Secretary to the Committee. Based on his analysis of the initial applications to the Foundation, and his previous experience at Kansas State College, Tjerandsen was hired in 1953. It was Tjerandsen who essentially performed the work of the Foundation for its entire duration.

An important feature of the Committee's report was the recommendation that grant-making activities be divided among three discrete areas. The first was defined as the "improvement of citizenship participation on a community basis," the second as support for research on the "process of becoming an American citizen," and the third as funding worthwhile groups related to the Foundation's statement of purpose which did not fall under the first two categories.

The Committee developed five criteria which were adopted by the trustees in evaluating the merits of the applications: 1) Did the application fall within the established guidelines of education and citizenship participation? 2) Were the proposed activities consistent with the aims of the proposals? Did the applicants show how the activities might be expected to change citizen behavior? 3) Did the applicants have the understanding, interest, and skills to complete the project? 4) Was the program practical? Would the resources be adequate to deal with the particular situation? 5) Was the probable cost sufficiently small in relation to expected benefits to warrant the support from the foundation's modest resources?

In addition to the five criteria mentioned above, institutions and groups applying for funding from the Foundation had to meet three further requirements: they had to be tax-exempt organizations; they could not be on the U.S. Attorney General's list of subversive organizations; and they were to be engaged in either research or education to improve citizen participation.

In the course of its existence, the Schwarzhaupt Foundation disbursed $3,361,973 in grants. The kinds of projects receiving Foundation support included: cooperative nursery care in an interracial community (South Chicago Community Center); research projects to identify problems in citizenship organizations (the University of Michigan survey of the League of Women Voters); neighborhood improvement organizations (United Community Fund of San Francisco, Citizens Planning and Housing Association of Baltimore, Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference); and organizations to improve the citizen participation of minority groups (Highlander Folk School, Industrial Areas Foundation, Migrant Ministry, American Indian Development, and Unitarian Service Committee). A significant if not disproportionate number of projects from the Chicago area were funded, causing occasional concern among the board members. In fact, Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago received so much money from Schwarzhaupt that at least one author assumed the Schwarzhaupt Foundation was located in Chicago (see Saul Alinsky's humorous letter of April 14, 1966 in Box 29 Folder 18).

In the 1950s, during the Foundation's greatest period of activity, the trustees met twice a year, later reducing this to one meeting a year (usually held in New York). Before each meeting of the Foundation, Tjerandsen prepared a 1-3 page report on each grant application received along with recommendations for approval or denial. The trustees received these summaries in advance of the board meetings, and then came to a conclusion regarding the project.

In addition to the recommendations (or appraisals) of grant applications that Tjerandsen supplied to the trustees, he also submitted monthly reports. These reports introduced new applications received, results of meetings held with grant recipients, and summaries of reports submitted by the recipients. Then, at the board meeting, Tjerandsen summarized the appraisal and contributed to the discussion that followed. Application was not made unless it reflected a consensus. If any trustee had significant reservations about an application, the proposal was rejected.

The terms of Schwarzhaupt's bequest to the Foundation required that all funds were to be disbursed and the Foundation dissolved within 25 years of Emil Schwarzhaupt's death (March 30, 1950). Accordingly, the trustees met on March 31, 1975 to discuss a course of action. Adolph Hirsch reported that "substantially all the assets of the foundation, both principal and income, had been distributed." The trustees noted that the only project not yet completed was the writing, publication, and distribution of the final report. The trustees concluded that it was premature to adopt a plan of dissolution since activities in connection with the report would require "new contractual relations for the publication and distribution of the report."

The trustees did not meet again until April 15, 1979, when they again considered dissolution of the Foundation. Tjerandsen, who prepared the final report, explained that a draft was being written but that it would take an "extended time" before the report would be ready. The trustees decided to wait until after the report was published before considering dissolution.

The final report, Education for Citizenship: A Foundation's Experience, was published in 1980. Promotional circulars were mailed to individuals and institutions likely to benefit from the report's findings, and copies of the book were distributed without charge to those who returned a postal card.

By late 1981 about 1500 copies of a press run of about 200 had been distributed, and the trustees met in November to consider termination of the Foundation. While the actual date of dissolution is not found in the records, the trustees in their final actions granted some of the remaining funds of the Foundation to the Highlander Center, Resources for Just Communities, Santa Cruz, California, to cover the costs of distributing the final reports, and the remainder to the University of Chicago Library to process the records of the Foundation.