History

The Landis & Gyr Foundation was established in 1971 by the Gyr family and the Landis & Gyr Group to mark the 75th anniversary of the company, which was founded in Zug in 1896. For the past 47 years, the Foundation has been supporting projects in culture and the humanities at a regional, Swiss and European level. The fellowships awarded for a residency in London, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia (since 2017), Zug and Berlin (until 2016) have formed a major part of the Foundation’s work for nearly 30 years. In the early 1990s, the Foundation also began fostering cultural exchange with Eastern European countries and supporting individual projects in the humanities. In 2014, the Foundation then introduced its new, project-specific travel grants for the Balkans and Turkey, the place of origin of many immigrants in Switzerland.