Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium St. Wendel

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Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium St. Wendel
Ajg front.jpg
type of school State-recognized, Catholic private school
founding 1898
address

Missionshausstrasse 50

place St. Wendel
country Saarland
Country Germany
Coordinates 49 ° 27 '51 "  N , 7 ° 11' 34"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 27 '51 "  N , 7 ° 11' 34"  E
carrier Divine Word Missionaries
student 249 (2017)
Teachers 28 (2017)
management Rainer Bommer (secular), P. Fabian Conrad, SVD (spiritual)
Website www.ajg-wnd.de

The Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium ( AJG , formerly Missionshaus St. Wendel ) is a Catholic private school in Saarland founded by the Christian religious order of the Steyler Missionaries (SVD) .

history

In 1898 Arnold Janssen founded a school in St. Wendel for the purpose of vocational training of no longer compulsory schooling, Catholic, male youths as friars for missionary work . For this purpose he bought the “Langenfelder Hof”, an area of ​​around 340 hectares made up of forest, meadows and fields. The school was the farm building of the "Wendelinushof", into which training workshops for the manual, agricultural and technical training had been integrated.

From 1900 onwards, the mission house and a church were built for high school education to become a religious priest . A boarding school followed in 1904 . While the curriculum , which was committed to the goal of training missionaries, initially deviated significantly from the corresponding state institutions, the curriculum was completely changed in 1911 , in which the teaching objective and teaching tasks of the individual classes and subjects were unreservedly linked to the state humanistic Gymnasium was completed. At the same time there was a move towards letting the students take the state school-leaving examination.

Soon after the outbreak of the First World War , in which a total of 160 students from the house were drafted as soldiers, 19 of whom were again killed, the south wing was made available to the authorities for hospital purposes. In the St. Wendel reserve hospital - one of a total of five set up by the German national order - wounded soldiers were cared for until the end of the war in 1824 (on a total of 86,200 nursing days). After the armistice, French agencies were billeted and withdrew in the summer of 1919.

From the very beginning, the National Socialist government, which came to power in 1933, saw denominational schools as the spiritual enemy of youth education in their interests. "The monastery schools and similar institutions are not suitable, according to their intellectual constitution, to form a substitute for public German schools." In 1937 the Gauleiter of the Saarpfalz Gau , Josef Bürckel , had the high school of the mission monastery "the character of a state-recognized educational institution" withdrawn, since it was "according to its teaching goals, its institution and its mental constitution" "not suitable" to guarantee a valuable education of the middle school youth. "In 1938 the" Reich Ministry for Science, Education and Public Education "banned clergy from any teaching activity beyond religious instruction. Press campaigns, house searches, interrogations and arrests of clerical teachers were accompanied by public accusations by "[...] The Lügenfabrik im St. Wendel Mission House [...] was busy producing and distributing inflammatory pamphlets [...]".

The Catholic Church and the Mission House tried to refute the allegations of hostility to the state through legal means and tried to be "loyal to the new state." When selecting the teaching staff, it was promised to observe the principle of "political reliability". National Socialist publications and newspapers were displayed. For the continued existence of all Steyler mission schools, the order particularly pointed out “the conveyance of cultural values ​​in the German colonies”.

The Reich government, on the other hand, saw the missionary work “withdrawing numerous valuable forces from the German national community.” Adolf Hitler's First Secretary and Reichsleiter Martin Bormann could not see “to what extent these mission orders are of importance for the German cultural influence. [...] it is a self-made argument to prevent the elimination of the mission schools ”.

In 1939 the NSDAP Gauleitung Saar-Palatinate demanded that the municipal authorities "remove all monastic and other religious school facilities." In 1940 the school was closed and 120 mission students were transferred to the St. Wendel High School. The students continued to live in the mission house and were fed there. As early as 1938, the mission house had to provide rooms for the German armed forces, which remained stationed until the beginning of the French campaign in May 1940.

In January 1941, the Saarbrücken State Secret Police (Gestapo) confiscated the mission house, including all assets, for "continued violation of the security of the state". Members of the order were forbidden to stay in the Saar-Palatinate and Moselle districts. They were temporarily brought to the St. Augustin Mission House near Bonn . The friars responsible for the "Wendelinushof" were obliged to continue operations. The boarding school dissolved when the students left.

The public is said to have hardly noticed the dissolution and expropriation. In later reports the passive attitude of the Trier bishop Bornewasser to the events in St. Wendel is shown.

From September 1, 1941 to March 1945, the school was a National Political Education Institute , also known as "Napola", an elite school for the training of the next generation of National Socialist leaders. As with the majority of other Napolas, members of the SS were allegedly the school management of the NPEA St. Wendel.

On March 19, 1945, the Americans occupied St. Wendel and until the summer, temporarily 800 men moved into the facility. The French military then took up quarters here until January 1946. At the same time, another boarding school was set up for students from St. Wendel high school. A school was also started up again.

In April 1946 the French military authorities lifted the confiscation and the religious order regained the right of disposal over the complex. Extensive repair and expansion work - the war years and the occupation had left their mark - and a new boarding school building in the 1960s-1970s enlarged the facility.

At the end of the 1960s, however, the number of pupils for missionary training had fallen so far that the boarding school was closed and the school was continued as a "state-recognized Catholic private school". During this time the founder of the order was probably named "Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium".

In September 1969, 31 external students moved into the rooms of the mission house. At the beginning of the 1980s, there were increasing indications of numerous repeated cases of sexual abuse of boys in afternoon swimming lessons, which, however, were not followed up by the school administration. As a result, the number of new entrants fell. To counteract this, from 1984 onwards 35 girls were allowed to attend classes at the Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium for the first time, while there were no more newcomers available for the boarding school. The proportion of female students is now half of the total student body. The number of newly admitted pupils increased in the following years, so that four to five entrance classes are formed with each beginning school year (however, there were only two entrance classes in 2005/2006).

On November 2, 2015, the Steyler missionaries announced that, due to the financial situation of the Steyler missionaries, they would no longer form entry classes from the following school year, i.e. that the school would be discontinued. The efforts to find a new, more financially strong sponsor for the school had failed.

  • Entire complex "Missionshaus" with Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium and boarding school

  • Boarding school building (2005)

Former students

Well-known former students include (sorted by year of birth):

literature

  • [August] Tellkamp: History of the private high school of the mission house in St. Wendel. In: History of the schools in the city of St. Wendel. Festschrift to celebrate the centenary of the grammar school. E. Müller, St. Wendel 1924, pp. 159-168.
  • Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium Yearbook 2010. St. Wendel 2010.
  • Alois Heck: The St. Wendel Mission House under Nazi rule. In: Werner Prawdzik (Hrsg.): 100 years Missionshaus St. Wendel. 1898-1998. Vol. 2, Nettetal 2000, ISBN 3-8050-0426-5 .
  • Barbara Janßen: The mission houses of the SVD and St. Arnold Janssen , dissertation, University of Bonn, 2017; PDF output .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History - Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium. Retrieved on November 21, 2017 (German).
  2. ↑ Quotations and the numbers visualized in the diagram from Tellkamp: Geschichte (see literature).
  3. ↑ In October 1916 it was emphasized that the entire Steyler Missionsgesellschaft […] has not counted a single French in its ranks since its 41 years of existence ( Missionshaus St. Rupert. In: Salzburger Chronik. Jg. 52. No. 235 of October 14, 1916, p. 3 ( online at ANNO )).
  4. ↑ Tellkamp: Geschichte (see literature), p. 162 f.
  5. ↑ Deconfessionalization of German youth. In: Freiburger Nachrichten. Daily newspaper for western Switzerland. Vol. 74. No. 183 of August 9, 1937, p. 1 ( online at e-newspaperarchives ).
  6. ^ Saarbrücker Zeitung. July 31, 1937.
  7. ^ Saarbrücker Zeitung. April 16, 2010.
  8. ^ History - Arnold-Janssen-Gymnasium. Retrieved on November 21, 2017 (German).
  9. ↑ W. Prawdzik: 100 years ..., and oral. Information from members of the order.
  10. ^ Saarbrücker Zeitung. 3rd November 2015.
  11. ↑ Philosophical-Theological University SVD Sankt. Augustin - Prof. Dr. Bernd Werle SVD, Professor of Moral Theology and Rector of the PTH St. Augustin. Retrieved November 21, 2018 .