Τhe Knapp Foundation supports scholars pursuing academic endeavour at the highest level in the United Kingdom. We promote research into European intellectual and social history, broadly interpreted, from its roots in classical (Greek and Roman) antiquity to the present day. We do this through philosophical, historical, and archival research, fully acknowledging the breadth of political and religious traditions (and their challengers) within that history. We support study, research, publication, preserving the practices that uphold these endeavours. We often support scholars and projects of demonstrable excellence that have struggled to find financial support by other means.
We seek to open paths for the most fundamental enquiries into truth, across the centuries, especially in universities and places of higher learning.
Ferdinand Knapp was a German with Austrian roots who received a doctorate from Cambridge in 2000 and became a banker. He had also studied at Heidelberg and Edinburgh. Gifted, keen witted, and humorous, Ferdinand had a profound grasp of German, French, and English literature, and a love of the United Kingdom, its history, and institutions. He showed every sign (until his untimely death in 2014) of becoming a leading figure in international banking. He understood the European intellectual tradition from its origins in antiquity to the present: its strengths and flaws and ironies, its place, its past and future hopes.
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The Knapp Foundation CIO is registered with the Charity Commission, Charity Number 1200294. Relevant documents are available here.