Dieter Fuchs Stiftung

About Dieter Fuchs Stiftung

The Dieter Fuchs Stiftung is a charitable foundation with legal capacity under German civil law, seated in Dissen am Teutoburger Wald at Dieter-Fuchs-Straße 10 and recognised on 23 September 2002, and it stands in the foundation directory of the Amt für regionale Landesentwicklung Weser-Ems in Oldenburg as number 09 (036), the authority that supervises it.^[1][2] The spice maker Dieter Fuchs (1928–2019) set it up to support science, education, upbringing, integration, art and culture in the Osnabrück region and above all in his home town, and to keep his company's seat in Dissen for the long run.^[1][3][4] The Fuchs Gruppe, the spice and herb group registered as DF World of Spices SE, names it as its largest indirect shareholder, with 90 %.^[5]

A foundation of this legal form has no members and no shareholders and is answerable to the state supervisory authority rather than to an owner: the Stiftung holds itself, and the Weser-Ems directory of foundations with legal capacity under civil law, not a commercial register, is where it is recorded.^[2][1] It carries the legal entity identifier 875500OSPXQMMIGJ6J98, issued in March 2019 and last updated on 5 February 2026, which gives the seat at Dieter-Fuchs-Straße 10, dates the creation of the foundation to 23 September 2002 and classifies it under legal form V2YH, Stiftung des privaten Rechts; GLEIF carries reporting exceptions in place of both a direct and an ultimate accounting consolidating parent, with natural persons as the reason.^[6][7][8] Josef Diekmann is its board, and a five-member board of trustees advises and supervises him, chaired by the former German Federal President Christian Wulff with the auditor Claus Niemann as his deputy, alongside Philip Fuchs of Fuchs Gewürze, the political scientist Dorothee Kellermann von Schele and the entrepreneur Hans-Günter Trockels; the trustees meet two or three times a year, decide the grants and are charged with keeping the company's stability, culture and seat in the founder's home town.^[2][9] Recent grants have gone to seven reading sponsorships in Dissen schools and to a teaching high-ropes course at Barkhausen.^[3]

Between the foundation and the group stand the family's holding vehicles in Dissen. The Stiftung's own shareholding is in DFS Beteiligungen GmbH, HRB 110912 Osnabrück: the shareholder list that company filed on 5 June 2019 names the Stiftung, and North Data's mention index records it there.^[10] DFS Beteiligungen, entered in August 2006 for the purpose of holding exactly that interest, is the limited partner of DF Verwaltung GmbH & Co. KG, HRA 110593 Osnabrück, and the shareholder lists DF World of Spices SE filed on 8 June 2007, 5 July 2018, 30 September 2019 and 13 July 2023 name that partnership as the shareholder of the holding company.^[11][12]

Dieter Fuchs brought his shares into the foundation step by step from its creation onwards.^[4] In the succession arrangement reported on 6 June 2016, when the Finnish Paulig group was granted minority rights amounting to joint control, he transferred the majority of his shares in the holding company to the Stiftung and further shareholdings to the family foundation DF Family Trust.^[13] German Wikipedia dates the transfer of the majority to 2015, when Nils Meyer-Pries took over the leadership, and it is Wikipedia that divides the group in figures: 90 % with the Dieter Fuchs Stiftung and the remaining 10 % with a family foundation, which the article calls only that.^[14] The group's own account gives the same 90 % for the Stiftung, which it restated as the Fuchs shareholders bought back the 25.01 % minority the Paulig group had held since 2000, with effect from 1 January 2023.^[5] Dieter Fuchs died in March 2019, and the group then passed wholly into the hands of the two foundations.^[4][14]