The Founder

Parental Home and Education

DANNIE N. HEINEMAN was born on 23 November 1872 in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A. His father, James, whose family had immigrated to Bangor, Maine, from Germany in the 1840s, ran a tobacco business in Charlotte. There, he met Dannie's mother, Minna Hertz, who had only just arrived from the Lower Saxony town of Ottersberg. Both parents were of the Jewish faith. After her husband's premature death, Minna was left destitute with the care of her two small sons, Dannie and Alfred (Alfred would die at the age of 11 in 1887 after becoming ill). Minna was able to earn enough money to return to Germany in 1883, where she settled near friends. In order to get by financially, Minna opened a boarding house, and Dannie gave private English lessons. After finishing school, the young Heineman had wanted to study medicine, but he was not in a position to finance his own studies. Fortunately, there was an engineering scholarship for Americans studying at the Hanover Technical College that was funded by a successful American businessman who had studied there before.

Entry into Professional Life

Heineman seized this opportunity and, after successfully completing his studies, received an electrical engineering degree on 18 July 1893. Afterwards, he joined the Union Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, Berlin, (UEG, AEG), which was initially established and operated as "Deutsche Edison" by Emil Rathenau, the father of the famous industrialist and foreign minister Walter Rathenau. At that time, the American engineering company General Electric, where Charles Steinmetz and Thomas Edison worked as managers, intended to award licenses for its products - abroad under one condition, of course:

"The license-holding company had to employee three American engineers"

At the time, UEG was employing Heineman and two other American engineers, and thus was awarded the coveted manufacturing license. After two years of administrative work in the main office in Berlin, Heineman was entrusted over the following four years with the electrification of tram networks and the construction of power plants and distribution networks in Belgium (Lüttich), Germany (Koblenz) and Italy (Naples).

Establishing His Collection of Handwritings

In February 1898, as Heineman was working as an engineer in Lüttich, he bought a five-centime issue of l'Aurore that contained Zola's polemic "J'accuse." Profoundly impressed, Dannie retained the issue; it was to become the first acquisition of his giant collection, which is now kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

The collection contains special handwritings, among them autographs and manuscripts of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Haydn, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Richard Strauß and Wagner.

Furthermore, it contained sections of Goethe's "Faust, Part II", Napoleon’s letter from Kepler to Luther, handwritings from Schiller and Heine, as well as the complete manuscript of Rousseau's novel "La nouvelle Heloïse." This collection, which also has original documents from famous scientists like Einstein, reveals the outstanding character of the founder, as Dannie Heineman "had a deep respect for creative people."

Sofina

In 1901, the UEG held a share in the Belgian company Electrique and, in recognition of his skills, it entrusted Heineman with the management of the company. Under his direction, several power plants and distribution networks were built, and coal and steel mines were electrified. Heineman's life work, however, was with the Société Financière de Transports et d'Entreprises Industrielles (Sofina), S.A., in Brussels. In 1905, he took over management of the small company, which had been founded by a group of Belgian bankers and German industrialists. At the time, Sofina’s sphere of activity was very limited. There were only three employees: an administrator, a bookkeeper and an errand boy. Dannie Heineman joined the company on the condition that he could leave the company after six months if he was not put in a position in which he could develop new projects. In the end, he stayed exactly 50 years as the head of the company. He did not retire until 1955, at the age of 83.

Up to the Second World War, Sofina developed from a small tram company to one of the most important energy industry and financial companies of the world, employing more than 40,000 workers. Under Heineman's direction, Sofina engineers worked in Central and South America, Western Europe and the Mideast as consultants for the construction and development of hydroelectric and steam power plants and networks. Knowing that technical consulting alone was not enough, Sofina also took over financial and administrative consulting and the implementation of many projects. As a result of the collective experiences in all of these different areas, and on the basis of research in its own laboratories, under Heineman, Sofina became a leader in the area of economic analysis, as well as in scientific and technical research.

His Life's Work

Because of his leadership qualities, organizational skills, and broad business vision, Dannie Heineman was considered one of the great pioneers of modern technology, responsible for changing the face of Europe. In 1930, the University of Cologne awarded him an honorary doctorate, citing his pioneering work in the development and distribution of electrical power, his recognition of electricity’s great importance, and his skills in the creation of power-generation and distribution facilities.

In naming him an honorary senator, the Hanover Technical College honored its former student on 13 April 1955 for his successful work as a founder of the worldwide electricity industry, as an engineer and entrepreneur, and for his promotion of peaceful international cooperation.

Heineman used his considerable wealth to help the public at large. The projects he promoted for the public good were in scientific research, education, charity and the arts. In 1928, he founded the "Minna-James-Heineman Foundation" in Hanover, in memory of his mother, who had died the previous year.

Political Involvement

Dannie Heineman also made a significant political contribution to peace and charity in the world. When Belgium was occupied in 1914 at the start of the First World War, Heineman feared that the population would starve without food supplies from abroad. So, he arranged for diplomatic negotiations between Germany, England, France, and later the United States, thus preventing famine in Belgium. He played a decisive role in the establishment and set-up of the "Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation" and the "Commission for Relief in Belgium." The purpose of these organizations was to supply Belgium with food. In recognition of these contributions, the Belgium government awarded him the "Grand-Croix de l'Ordre de Leopold II" in the 1950s and named him "Grand-Officier de l'Ordre de Leopold". Heineman's diverse political activities were also distinguished by his commitment to the acceptance of Germany into the League of Nations. The public speeches he gave on various occasions in 1930 under the heading "Outline of a New Europe," were at the time considered visionary, and have now been partially implemented in the European Community.

In the years before the Second World War, Heineman attempted to establish contact between opposition groups and figures in Germany, such as Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht, and politicians of Western states, on the one hand, and aid those attacked by the Nazi regime, on the other hand. Thus, he supported almost a hundred Belgian families as they fled to Luxembourg and other states and helped them established their own livelihood.

Konrad Adenauer

When Konrad Adenauer, who would later become the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, was removed by the Nazis in 1933 as Lord Mayor of Cologne and president of the Prussian Council of State, his salary and all of his bank accounts were frozen at the same time. According to Lazarus: "The short American went up to Adenauer with outstretched hand, greeted him in this new environment with the same respectful cordiality with which he met him earlier in his office. Then he said, straight out, "I can imagine you need money now. Mr. Adenauer, I have brought you 10,000 marks in cash, since you will surely have difficulties cashing a check." It was one of the rare moments in Adenauer's life in which a situation left him stunned. "But, that's not possible", he said, in refusal. "I have no idea whether I will be in a position to pay it back. My salary is frozen, and my bank account..," Heineman cut him off with a wave of the hand, "I know that the money is well invested," he said, pulled out his billfold and laid an envelope with banknotes on the table. He refused a promissory note all but indignantly, and as Adenauer went to thank him, he stood up hastily, shook the perplexed man's hand and left hurriedly and in a busy manner as always."

Motivation for Establishing the Foundation

At the end of the 1950s, Heineman was able to bring about the start of economic cooperation between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1936, Dannie Heineman had met with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who made him an active friend of the former Daniel Sieff Research Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and sought to interest him in its expansion. Now, through a letter of recommendation for Dr. Josef Cohn, representative of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, a meeting of Cohn and Adenauer was arranged. The political support for the plan by the German chancellor finally led to cooperation between the Max Planck Society and the Weizmann Institute. On 3 May 1966, Adenauer, in the full regalia of the Weizmann Institute, formally recognized the contributions of his friend Dannie Heineman to German-Israeli friendship, with an honorary membership.

In 1940, the Heineman family had moved from war-torn Europe to New York. In the U.S., Dannie Heineman and his wife, Hettie, established the Heineman Foundation for Research, Educational, Charitable and Scientific Purposes, Inc. The Heineman Foundation actively supports scientific research, education projects and the arts, especially music. There is special support for heart research and heart surgery, as performed at the Heineman Medical Research Center of Charlotte, North Carolina - an institution that Heineman also founded. The Dannie Heineman Award for Mathematical Physics, jointly conferred since 1959 by the American Physical Society and American Institute for Physics, now reverts to the Heineman Foundation and is sponsored by it. In addition, the American Institute of Physics in New York awards the Dannie Heineman Award in Astrophysics.

Toward the end of his life, Dannie N. Heineman took up residence in Greenwich, Connecticut, in the U.S., where he died at age 90 on 31 January 1962. He was buried in his native town of Charlotte.

The Minna-James-Heineman Foundation owes its name to the founder's parents. In memory of his father, James Heineman, and especially his mother, Minna, who died in Hanover in 1927, Dannie N. Heineman established the foundation in Hanover in 1928.

The foundation charter, dated 12 July 1929 and found today in the Hanover town archives, states: "The purpose of the foundation, aside from preserving the memory of the founder's mother, is exclusively a charitable one. To fulfill this purpose in accordance with the founder's intentions, older, needy, single women of educated standing, preferably of the Jewish faith and preferably from the town of Hanover, should be provided for in their old age in a residence at the foundation's home and with full board and, as a rule, without charge." The original purpose of the foundation authorized on 25 July 1928 was to provide for the aforementioned persons in their old age in a nursing home. The building in Hanover was designed by the prominent Belgian architect Henry van de Velde. Heineman's wife, Hettie (nee Meyer), who likewise came from Hanover, helped with the overall design, with the planning in Brussels and with supervision of the construction work in Hanover. The brick building is one of the most outstanding achievements in the later work of van de Velde. It is a successful combination of a solid sense of style and absolute modernity, influenced by contemporary Dutch rationalism (De Stijl) and expressionism (Amsterdam school).