Giordano Bruno Foundation
The Giordano Bruno Foundation is a Germany-based non-profit foundation under public law that promotes evolutionary humanism and the enlightenment. It was founded by entrepreneur Herbert Steffen in 2004 and was named after Giordano Bruno. Cofounder and spokesperson is Michael Schmidt-Salomon. He has formed the Executive Board with Ulla Wessels since 2022. The foundation has more than 10,000 supporting members and 50 regional and university groups.
Goals
The Giordano Bruno Foundation advocates the position of Evolutionary Humanism, as formulated in the Manifesto of Evolutionary Humanism, which was published by Michael Schmidt-Salomon in 2005 and sold around 50,000 copies. In the manifesto, Schmidt-Salomon pleads for a naturalistic philosophy. He starts from a naturalistic concept of the cosmos in which there are no interventions of supernatural creatures in world events by way of miracles. The manifesto outlines, that humanity will be able to create more life-friendly, free, and just conditions than can be found today. The concept can be traced to the work of Julian Huxley, the first UNESCO Director General and a major contributor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Activities
Starting with the 2005 series of events “Heathen fun rather than Hell’s torture” on the occasion of the Catholic World Youth Day in Cologne, the gbs has been addressing a wide range of topics around humanism, enlightenment and the principles of a scientific world view in many highly publicized campaigns and events. A chronology and the documentary "In Humanity We Trust – The story of evolutionary humanism" provide information on the most important events in the history of the foundation. The gbs und its regional and university groups organize about 150 events per year throughout Germany.In 2007, the gbs supported the founding of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims, which inspired similar movements in other countries; in 2012, the campaign “Against Religious Discrimination at the Workplace” ; in 2013, the project Evokids - Evolution in Primary School; in 2017, the founding of the Institute for Secular Law ''; and in 2017, the founding of the Atheist Refugee Relief.