The Donors

The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds was established in 1983 by the holding companies of the Boehringer Ingelheim Group, C. H. Boehringer Sohn and Boehringer Ingelheim International as a foundation for basic research in medicine.
Founded in 1885 as the production of tartaric acid with a workforce of 28 people, Boehringer Ingelheim is today one of the world's 20 leading pharmaceutical corporations and the biggest still in family ownership. It employs more than 41,000 people worldwide and has 138 affiliated companies on all continents. 96% of the total proceeds arises from the manufacture and distribution of human pharmaceuticals.
 
The corporation maintains four major research & development centres worldwide, where it develops drugs against cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diseases of the central nervous system, immunological and inflammatory diseases, metabolic, respiratory and viral diseases. It sponsors the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria.

Owners and corporation have a long-standing history of donorship. In addition to the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, they founded the Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation for the Arts and the Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation (Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung). The latter supports basic research in chemistry, biomedicine and pharmacy and pays particular attention to the University of Mainz (Germany).

History

In 1817, Christian Friedrich Boehringer (1791-1867) established a drug business in Stuttgart which was given the name C. F. Boehringer & Söhne in 1859. In 1872, Christoph Heinrich Boehringer (1820-1882) moved the company to Mannheim. Ten years later, his eldest son Ernst Boehringer (1860-1892) made his brother-in-law Dr. Friedrich Engelhorn his partner.

When Ernst Boehringer died without a male heir, the firm, as stipulated in the contract, passed automatically into the hands of the Engelhorn family. It retained the name C. F. Boehringer & Söhne and traded under the name Boehringer Mannheim until it was sold by the Engelhorn family to the Swiss pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche & Co AG in 1997. Other than by name and the family ties of the founders, the two companies Boehringer Mannheim and Boehringer Ingelheim have never had any connections.

Ernst's younger brother Albert Boehringer (1861-1939) did not enter his father's enterprise in Mannheim. He chose instead in 1885 to purchase a small tartar factory with a workforce of 28 people in Ingelheim am Rhein - the beginnings of the present concern Boehringer Ingelheim. His impressive lifework was consolidated no less successfully by his sons Albert Boehringer (1891-1960) and Dr. Ernst Boehringer (1896-1965), his son-in-law Julius Liebrecht (1891-1974) and his grandchildren Dr. Wilhelm Boehringer (1931-1975) and Hubertus Liebrecht (1931-1991). Today, the concern is owned by the families Boehringer and von Baumbach.