The Konrad Adenauer Foundation is a German research foundation associated with that country's Christian Democratic Union. It was founded in 1956 as the "Society for Christian Democratic Education Work" and renamed after the former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1964. The foundation is based at Wesseling near Bonn. It is the largest of the politically affiliated research foundations in Germany, and funds policy research, in the mould of a think tank, but the larger part of its sponsorship is research in the social sciences not directly connected to framing policy.