Hanns Seidel (1901–1961) was a German politician who served as Minister-President of Bavaria from 1957 to 1960. He was a member, and from 1955 to 1961 chairman, of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria. As the newly elected chairman he immediately initiated the modernization, reorientation and reorganization of the CSU and thus created the basis for its rise to become the Bavarian majority party.
Hanns Seidel was a far-sighted strategist and statesman whose work combined a pragmatic sense of reality with normative visions. For the politician Seidel it was an intellectual necessity to deal with fundamental questions of politics and society beyond the routine business of everyday political life. The key to understanding his political actions can be found in his worldview, which was significantly shaped by the challenging socio-historical and socio-economic conditions of the Weimar Republic.
The Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (Hanns Seidel Foundation), formed in 1967 is named after him.