Welcome to the Possehl Foundation

Where we come from

In his will, Emil Possehl, a businessman and senator of Lübeck, bequeathed all his business interests to the Possehl Foundation, which ist now 103 years old.

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Matt Mullican

The Foundation awards four prizes, including the Possehl Prize for International Art. The prizewinner in 2022 was Matt Mullican, whose retrospective could be seen last year in Lübeck.

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What we promote

We support community life in a multitude of ways. Up to 500 applications per year reflect the diversity of the non-profit and benevolent work carried out by the people of Lübeck.

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It was in early summer 2020, right at the beginning of the covid pandemic, that the Possehl Foundation launched a broad-based initiative to support culture in Lübeck and entitled Cultural Sparks. Its flexible structure gave independent artists and performers a wide range of opportunities to be creative and innovative. In the current round of grants, the sixth, applicants are again being asked to make their projects as ecologically sustainable as possible.

Heinke Both

In October 2022 the artist Heinke Both, winner of the Possehl Prize for Lübeck Art 2021, presented in her exhibition NOIR MONTER in the Chain Store at Kulturwerft Gollan a series of lithographs that she has developed in an experimental process with the artist and printer Lars Lundqvist.

Our publications

To mark our jubilee we published a book and a magazine illustrating the history and the current role of the Foundation and the Hanseatic City of Lübeck: “POSSEHL History and Character of a Foundation” by the historian Axel Schildt, and “GUT UND SCHÖN? The Possehl Foundation in Lübeck” by journalists from the economics magazine brand eins Wissen.