The Alfred Schmid-Stiftung is a registered foundation located at Zug, Switzerland. Its founder was Dr Dieter Lauermann, sole heir to the estate of the Swiss citizen Prof. Dr Alfred Schmid (1899-1968), who died childless and unmarried. The foundation’s aim is to preserve and carry forward Schmid’s spiritual and scientific legacy, particularly through the publication of books and writings that reflect his ideas and worldview.

First and foremost, the foundation has published and republished Alfred Schmid’s own writings, for instance, posthumously in October 2007, his Principium motus, which Dietmar Lauermann, over the course of many years, put together from Schmid’s partially unsorted and often fragmented manuscripts. 

In addition, the foundation supports the publication of works that have a spiritual affinity to Alfred Schmid’s work. Naturally, those newer writings cannot be expected to reflect his ideas exactly or even to share his religious or political affiliation. However, what greatly matters to the foundation is that in a time of total materialism enshrined in a worldview that, uncritically, recognizes only abstract intelligence and measurable data and no deeper meaning, our books promote an intellectual and spiritual reorientation.  

Accordingly, we publish a wide range of works, spanning philosophy, science, religion, and ethics, as well as art. For this purpose, the foundation has created the publishing company Die Graue Edition, which is in charge of everything published by the foundation. The name “Graue Edition” recalls the time of Schmid’s engagement with the Youth Movement when he founded and led the Grey Corps.

Dietmar Lauermann (1915-2012), who throughout his life had deep ties to Alfred Schmid, started the foundation after Schmid’s death. While still at school in Frankfurt am Main, the Youth Movement brought him into contact with the Grey Corps where he met Alfred Schmid for the first time. During the war, Lauermann and Schmid collaborated professionally in Berlin. When the war ended, Dietmar Lauermann moved to southern Germany and Alfred Schmid returned to Switzerland, but they kept close ties with each other, both professionally and even more so through the exchange of philosophical ideas.

Even before his retirement, and with greater intensity after, Dietmar Lauermann, in collaboration with Walter Sauer, took charge of the Graue Edition, which remained of the utmost importance to him well into old age. He contributed to several of the books published in the Graue Edition, especially through forewords and afterwords.

In 1980, the Alfred Schmid-Stiftung created the publishing house Die Graue Edition. The first books came out in 1981, initially on a commission basis with the publisher Suedmarkverlag Fritsch, Heidenheim, under the name “Die Graue Reihe”, and from 1993 onwards independently with the Graue Edition Verlag and varying distributors. The catalogue currently comprises more than 80 titles.