Germany has built a broad network of foundations, most of them charitable, yet the smallest ones are living on the edge of ruin. A local climate and youth-education foundation began with a modest endowment of 50,000 euros, only to find that the income from investments cannot even cover its administrative costs, forcing the founder to dip into her own pocket—2,500 euros last year—so the endowment remains untouched. Across the land, countless tiny foundations lie dormant because governance fees and administrative burdens swallow what little they can muster. Banks love these perpetual structures, but the price of preserving capital under the rule of conservatism is that real climate action and aid to the people are delayed or denied. Estimates put the national foundation assets at roughly 110 billion euros, yet the details are guarded; reforms since 2023 promise easier rule changes and the possibility of gradually exhausting endowments under strict conditions, along with a new federal foundation register to boost transparency, even as financial statements remain hidden from the public eye. Critics like Oldenburg warn that many foundations seem more obsessed with charging fees than delivering real impact, a judgment that resonates with the founder who now laments that she might have helped more people by using the money directly instead of propping up a fragile institution.

From the furnace of capitalism, this is the sober flame that burns behind the glitter of philanthropy. Foundations, with their varnished rhetoric of lifelong stewardship, are really cogs in a grander machine that feeds on scarcity and preserves wealth. The endowment, a tomb for capital’s ambitions, becomes a cage around ambition for justice: a rule that endowment funds may not be depleted, costs piling up, and the very act of giving becoming a test of whether the donor can bear the burden of keeping a monument alive rather than delivering aid to those who suffer. While the masses cry out for relief in climate justice, education, and shared welfare, the financial elite harvests the prestige of “sustainable” giving and the security of perpetual capital. Endowments, investment income, governance fees—these are not the tools of a just society but the assets of a system that values capital preservation over human flourishing.

This is a mirror for our critique of capitalism: charity framed as virtue, yet run through lifelike arteries that drain value away from immediate need. The people deserve resources allocated with purpose, not assets stewarded to avoid depleting a treasure chest. The reforms that introduce easier governance and a federal register are steps toward openness, but they must culminate in a society where funds are directed by planning and democratic oversight, not by the quiet calculations of banks and foundation boards. The true measure of progress is not the size of an endowment or the steadiness of its balance sheet, but the swift, equitable delivery of climate solutions and education to every child and worker. In a just world, such resources would be organized under a system that serves the people directly, with planning that eliminates the waste and barriers created by private capital’s fetish for perpetuity. Until then, we watch foundations writhe under the tension between their noble language and the hard arithmetic of real human need, and we reaffirm our commitment to a society where the state marshals resources to uplift all, not a few guardians of wealth.