Amani secondary school in Kabul
The Amani-Oberrealschule ("Lycee ye alieh ye Amani", Persian ليسه عالى امانىAmani High School) is an educational institution in the Afghan capital Kabul . It is now one of over 130 German schools abroad that are looked after by the Central Office for Schools Abroad in the Federal Office of Administration .
history
The Afghan King Amanullah led Afghanistan to independence in 1919 and quickly developed ambitious modernization plans for his country. He is the namesake of this school. With the suffix [i] Amani means belonging to the name Aman : here the king Amanullah (see Dar ul-Aman). Aman is an Arabic word and also a personal name. The name is known and loved in Islamic countries and means "without danger", protection , security , mercy . Often the name is associated with the Allah (God) or "Din" religion. In the Iranian languages, "ul" are then combined with Arabic: as Aman - ul- allah that means as from God.
Amanullah was a modernizer. He had seen England subjugate and exploit Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and India, which traditionally had very good relations with Afghanistan. So he was inclined to cooperate with Germany, which was primarily interested in the country's development, in order to find a potent and reliable partner in it in the long term. So the proposal to found a new school with German teaching came in handy.
On April 15, 1924, the first headmaster Walther Iven opened the Amani-Oberrealschule, as it was called in honor of its royal sponsor. Studies Dr. Walter Iven in Charlottenburg, who taught at the German schools in Constantinople and Tehran for ten years and mastered Persian, which is mainly spoken in Afghanistan. In a memorandum, the king developed a plan for a state German school in Kabul dem Erloge, which the Afghan government entrusted with its establishment and management. In the fall of 1923, Dr. Iven came to Kabul with two primary school teachers, but initially met with great resistance. These were rooted in violent French counter-propaganda. It originated with the "Mission scolaire francaise", which maintained a Lecee 'Ämaniyeh (Amaniyeh - an inflection of Amani) in Kabul and now saw its preferential position threatened by the hated Germans [...], wrote Secret Government Councilor Prof. Dr. Franz Schmidt
The language of instruction was almost entirely German. As in the German school system, the school was divided into basic level (grades 1 to 5), intermediate level (grades 6 to 9) and upper level (grades 10 to 12).
The aim of the training was to “prepare the pupils for studying at German universities with the aim of providing His Majesty with capable higher officials, engineers, doctors and teachers and to educate the pupils to be independent, responsible and strong-minded people”.
The Kabul final examination was recognized by the Afghan-German school agreement of 1928; it entitled to study at all Prussian universities.
In 1929 King Amanullah was expelled from Kabul by insurgents. Their fanatical religious leader abolished the Ministry of Education and closed all schools. Headmaster Iven wrote to his wife: "The school served the Kohistanis (= Tajiks ) as barracks and the Afghans as a cattle shed."
The school furniture as well as the window frames were burned, the window panes ended up in the bazaar in Peshawar and the teaching material collection disappeared without a trace. The same fate befell the Amani school again in the nineties: 3,000 mujahideen , who had been housed in the school building for two years, tore all copper cables from the walls because they were not paid, they removed the sanitary facilities and sold everything. The furniture was also burned.
On October 15, 1929, King Nadir Shah, father of the last King Zahir Shah, took power. Soon afterwards, classes began again at the school, which was attended by 302 students. The number of pupils now grew rapidly: while in March 1932 there were 491 pupils, in 1933 there were already 619 boys attending the Amani secondary school.
In the same year, King Nadir Shah was assassinated; the assassin was a student at the Amani School. As a result, many students were arrested and some Afghan teachers were executed. The school was renamed Nedjat-Lycee, as all memory of King Amanullah should be erased from public life. Despite all the adversities, however, the first year graduated from the school in 1934.
After the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany, diplomatic relations between the two countries were resumed and teachers were sent to the Amani-Oberrealschule again. In 1954 the first German teacher began his service. In 1965 there were six teachers at the school, and in the 1970s there were twenty. In 1971/72 a new building was built near the German embassy, in which the school is still located today.
- In 1933 the name Amani-Oberrealschule was renamed Nedjat-Oberrealschule (Nedjat or Nedschat means rescue) after a high school graduate named Abdul Khaleq murdered King Nader Shah at a high school graduation ceremony. He was a follower of King Amanullah Khan.
- In 1938 the German teachers moved out of Kabul because of the Second World War. Former Amani students ran the secondary school in Kabul and taught in German.
- After the war, the German teachers returned there.
In 1974, on the 50th anniversary of the school, the school's renaming was reversed after the son of Nader Shah abdicated in a 1973 coup.
In 1978 the West German teachers left Kabul after the communist revolution of April 27, 1978. German as a foreign language and German-language science lessons were taken over by teachers from East Germany and the Democratic Republic of Germany until 1996, and because of the Cold War, they slept in the "preheated beds" of the Federal Republic of Germany . The Leibniz Society of the GDR filled the gap not only in the school system, but also in university education and replaced the partnership agreement in the field of economics that had previously existed between the universities of Bochum and Kabul. Furthermore, in the Soviet Union the language subject Pashto, which was still taught under Iranian Studies in the 1950s, was renamed Afghan Studies. In the GDR, in Berlin and in the Leibniz Society, departments for Afghan studies were also established. After the reunification of the two German states, the Afghanology departments in the old federal states were finally abolished by the federal government, especially since the ethnic term "afghan", which was and is occupied by Pashtuns and was officially imposed on "citizens of Afghanistan", is controversial.
On July 6, 2019, the former Amani graduates, three of their German teachers and their director from the 1970s celebrated the 95th anniversary of the Amani secondary school in Krefeld with a ceremony. The Lord Mayor of Krefeld attended the festival. Greetings from other places in Germany as well as from the Friends of the Amani-Oberrealschule were received. It is planned to publish a brochure on the occasion of the 95th existence of the Amani-Oberrealschule as soon as possible. Dr. Mir Hafizuddin Sadri, who translated the documents and greetings of the Festschrift on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Amani-Oberrealschule from German into Persian of the Dari and vice versa and who has been active as chairman of the alumni association since 1996, highlighted the cultural activities of the Amani Oberrealschule in particular emerged as the "summit of poetry", since "dramas arise in the years of maturity of a community". He briefly summarized Germany's cultural contributions in Kabul: 1. Pedagogical concept of bilingualism 2. Music: initially there were musical instruments in the rooms of the school, later instruction was given by Austrian teachers 3. Crafts: handicrafts, painting and exchange of drawings between Germany and Kabul 4. Joint music events between the two German schools (German school for children from Kabul and German school for children of German development workers, 400 families in the 1970s). B. the Zoroastrian, Hindu and Buddhist cultural sites in the Hindu Kush z. B. after Bamiyan by Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Samangan, Kabul and Balkh, Bagram, Shivaki, Bagrami 6. Chronological list of the dramas that the graduates of the upper school (10th, 11th and 12th grades) performed, but from the middle in the 1950s only performed the Abitur classes in the theater palaces in Kabul.
- 1949 “Dream on Life”, by Franz Grillparzer, played by the 10th grade
- 1950 “The Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare from the 11th grade
- 1951 “Emilia Galloti” by Lessing Bürgerliches Theater Lustspiel, played by the 12th grade
- 1959 Ovid's Metamorphosis Persiflage Pyramus and Thisbe, 12th grade (Abitur grade)
- 1961 Wilhelm Tell
- 1962 jester
- 1963 Caucasian Chalk Circle
- 1964 “The spendthrift” by Ferdinand Jakob Raimund
- 1965 Comedy: Woe to him who lies
- 1966 The Broken Jug, a comedy by Heinrich von Kleist
- 1967 Hocus-pocus play by Curt Goetz
- 1968 Faust by Goethe and three other plays by Lessing and Schiller
- 1969 Comedy Pseudolus by Titus Macchius Platus in the German translation by Ernst R. Lehmann-Leander
- 1974 Goethe's Faust for the fiftieth anniversary of the Amani
- 1976 Hermann the Kannengießer comedy by the Dane Ludvig Holberg "The political Kannengießer" 1976
The actors of the above-mentioned dramas at the time are now university professors, doctors and engineers from all disciplines. Approx. 60 people attended the ceremony in Krefeld.
literature
- Heinrich F Junker, Bozorg Alavi: Persian-German Dictionary. First edition. Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1988.
Web links
- Schools abroad
- Former student website
- Deutsche Welle: How Kabul got a German school
- Esteqlal & Malalai Schools in Kabul
Individual evidence
- ↑ FAZ No. 63/2002 .
- ^ Heinrich F Junker, Bozorg Alavi: Persian-German dictionary. First edition. Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1988, p. 55.
- ^ Journal Die Deutsche Schule im Auslande (July / August 1935), also in the Festschrift 80 Years Amani Oberrealschule 1924-2004 , published by AORS (Amani Oberrealschule) and with an addendum by Volker Bausch, coordinator of the two schools supported by both German states Afghanistan: Amani Oberrealschule and Aisha i Durani girls' high school
- ↑ German as a foreign language and language of instruction was first taught in that of Amanullah Khan (1919–1929) under the name Malali Girls Gymnasium from around the 1930s by Mrs. Marguerite Neufeind, wife of Abdul Ghafur Breshna . Frau Neufeind put some fables from Kalileh o Dimneh Kalīla wa Dimna or Panchatantra from the Persian version by Rudaki for the two so-called German schools abroad.
- ↑ Ahmed Rashid: TALIBAN - Afghanistan's warriors of God and jihad. Droemer, 2002, ISBN 3-426-77652-9 .
- ↑ Ernst-Albrecht von Renesse: Friendship committed - one hundred years of German-Afghan relations -. (PDF) In: Friendship obliges ... - Selected contributions from the XXIX. Villigster Afghanistan Conference 2015. Evangelical Academy Villigst , September 2016, p. 8 , accessed on September 8, 2019 .
Coordinates: 34 ° 31 '43.6 " N , 69 ° 11' 1.8" E
