Foundations and charitable status

The legal name of the ordinary German foundation, die Stiftung bürgerlichen Rechts, holds a construction English has no counterpart for: a genitive with no article in front of it. Bürgerlichen Rechts means “of civil law”, and because no des is there to show the case, the adjective has to do it. With a masculine or neuter noun that ending is -en, since the noun already carries the -s; the same pattern sits in schweren Herzens, with a heavy heart, and in the public-law counterpart, eine Körperschaft öffentlichen Rechts. The phrase is frozen. Whatever case Stiftung stands in, the genitive after it does not move: mit einer Stiftung bürgerlichen Rechts, die Satzung der Stiftung bürgerlichen Rechts. Only the article in front changes, and writing des bürgerlichen Rechts is not wrong, merely longer than the form the statutes and the registers use.