International audience When analyzing the involvement of external actors in revolutionary changes, the case of German political foundations leads us to broaden the time scale. Strongly embedded in the post-war institutional context, these foundations managed to develop strategies for party cooperation on various continents. Examining their involvement in central Europe before and after 1989 sheds light on relations between Western organisations and dissident movements. By focusing on how these foundations were embedded in German politics, we see that support for democracy abroad, far from being a consensual matter, could lead to conflicting interpretations at home.