Baltic School Miedzyzdroje

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The Baltic School Miedzyzdroje was founded in Miedzyzdroje in Western Pomerania after the First World War by intellectuals expelled from the Baltic States . Their children were accepted in the Dune Castle, which was also founded there. The school was founded by Carl Hunnius .

history

Beginnings

On February 10, 1919, the long-time director of the state school in Mitau , Carl Hunnius (1873–1964), founded the Baltic school and later the Dune Castle in Misdroy on the Pomeranian island of Wollin .

His intention was to offer a school of Baltic tradition to the many children who had come to Germany with their parents from the Baltic States , especially from Courland , with the retreating troops. The Baltic resort of Miedzyzdroje, with its vacant holiday homes in winter, had been chosen by many Balts, at least temporarily, as a cheap place to stay. After examining several possible locations for the school, Hunnius decided on Miedzyzdroje, especially since the community was interested in a grammar school, showed great courtesy, took over the salaries of four teachers and donated two free places for talented primary school students. Because the Baltic School was also attended by local children.

School operations began on February 10, 1919 with 42 Baltic students in the Miedzyzdroje youth home. Chairs and garden tables were borrowed from a hotel, and a circular from the responsible secret government and school council Bohnstedt to all schools in Pomerania produced several used wall maps. On February 28, 1920, the former hotel "Deutsches Haus" was acquired as a school building by the Baltenverband, but several rooms had to be rented to a cinema, a restaurant and two more rooms as a shop to cover costs.

Development of the school until 1932

In 1920 the Baltic School already had 204 students, 166 of them Balts. In 1923 there were 253, including some girls, whose number rose to a quarter by the time the school closed. The school staff consisted of 18 teachers, mostly Balts, most of whom had come from Mitau with Hunnius, and eight primary school teachers from Miedzyzdroje.

With the Abitur examination in the Baltic School in 1928, the period of external exams ended.

The school sponsor was the Baltic Trust Council, from 1922 the Baltic Red Cross, whose changing general representatives tried to solve the financial problems. The school fees could only be set low and even then not all parents could raise them. In 1932 the Baltic Red Cross considered closing the institution, but the financial restructuring was successful. For additional income, the boarding school was rented out to guests during the long summer vacation.

The Baltic Sea Boarding School Dune Castle in Miedzyzdroje

A boarding school to complement the Baltic School was also planned from the start. When Pastor Glass gave up his school boarding house in the Königshöhe house, it was possible to rent its rooms. Finally , on July 3, 1923, the Baltic Red Cross, based in Danzig , was able to acquire the Christian hospice "Dune Castle" as a boarding school building.

School as well as boarding school were initially dominated by the Baltic States by pupils, educators, teachers and other employees, but later still strongly influenced. Over time, the proportion of “Reich German” boarding school students grew. The Baltic School quickly acquired a good reputation, which led to the entry of numerous sons of noble families, mainly from Pomerania, West Prussia and East Prussia. The Baltic School advertised for this clientele in the German Adelsblatt . The boarding school was conservative in nature; manners and appearance were important. Sport also played a major role in boarding school life.

Boarding school directors in the dune castle were:

  • Reinhold Tantzscher (from November 24, 1923 to September 30, 1924)
  • Helmut Gurland (from October 1, 1924 to spring 1934)
  • Waldemar Wünsche (from spring 1934 to October 31, 1934)
  • Pastor Hans Lohmann (from November 1, 1934 to August 31, 1939)
  • Otto Magnus Edler von Rennenkampf (from September 1939 to December 1944 as a deputy, after Pastor Lohmann was called up for military service)

Development from 1933 to the end

After the boarding school management had succeeded for a long time in protecting Helmut Gurland, then so-called “ half-Jews ”, from attacks by local party officials, in 1934 they were given the choice of either closing the school and boarding school or separating from him. Gurland voluntarily resigned from his post and emigrated to Africa with his wife. In 1949 he died in an English internment camp in Rhodesia .

This forced departure led to a revolt by the boarding school students, who had advanced on their own to Hermann Göring , who was married to a Baltic woman, in order to persuade the popular boarding school director to remain - in vain. Only when the young, twenty-five-year-old Pastor Hans Lohmann headed the boarding school for the next five years (until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht ) did the situation calm down, although a rift within the alumni remained almost to this day.

Before the Christmas break in 1944, director Carl Hunnius had to resign on the orders of the superior school authorities. The boarding school closed its doors at the same time. Gert Kroeger (1907–1986) was acting headmaster . In mid-March 1945 the school had to be given up due to the advancing Red Army . As a result, the nationalization that had already been decreed on April 1, 1945 was not carried out.

meaning

The Baltic School would have remained one school among many had it not been for the adjoining boarding school, for which the term “Misdroy” mainly stood. It was shaped by its charismatic, long-time director Helmut Gurland, who was an ideal complement to the director. Hunnius described having found him as one of his greatest fortunes in life. How strong Gurland's influence was is reflected in many memoirs written by Międzyzdroje people. In a letter from 1976 a former boarding school student put it: “It is thanks to Gurland that Pension Glass and Königshöhe have become a dune castle. Without him, despite the towering figure of Hunnius Misdroy, the boarding school would never have presented what it lives on in our memories. He raised us to be masters in the best sense of the word. ”Helmut Gurland was the son of Rudolf Hermann Gurland, a Jew who converted as a rabbi and became a Protestant pastor. On top of that he married a second marriage to an aristocrat from Courland. This remarkable life can be read in his book In Two Worlds .

The long-time boarding school director Pastor Lohmann put it in 1977 as follows: “It was the security of this house with common inclinations and a common attitude towards life, but also with common aversion to the current trends. Prussian simplicity met with a Baltic upbringing that lives from the past, is open to the present and is thus able to cope with the future. "

Known students

From 1938 to 1942 one of the most famous students at the boarding school was Prince Claus von Amsberg , who later became the husband of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands . He came to Miedzyzdroje as a boy from East Africa. He showed his connection to the place and school by inviting Pastor Lohmann and sister Edith von Roth as guests of honor to his wedding in 1966.

The students at the Baltic School also included:

The Carl Hunnius boarding school in Wyk

The Carl Hunnius boarding school in Wyk, briefly connected to a private high school, was founded in 1946 with great difficulty. It was not only in this respect that it continued the tradition of “Miedzyzdroje”.

The name was deliberately linked to the Miedzyzdroje director, who died in Wyk in 1964 . Walter von Roth (1889–1969) as the founder and sponsor of the Wyker boarding school and Pastor Lohmann as the director continued the connection to the Baltic school, which has always been preserved as a memory, although this naturally, like the Baltic character of the Wyker boarding school, over time faded.

literature

(in order of appearance)

  • Carl Hunnius: History of the Baltic School from 1919 to 1929 . In: Baltic sheets. Sole communication organ of the Working Group on Baltic Organizations , year 1929, issue 4, pp. 54–61.
  • Gert Kroeger: From the spirit of the Baltic school . In: Baltische Hefte, Vol. 2 (1955/1956), pp. 22–34.
  • Carl Hunnius: My memories . Student History Association of the CC eV, Starnberg 1976 (= Historia academica of the Coburg Convent of the Academic Landsmannschaften and gymnastics associations at the universities , issue 14).
  • Bernt von Kügelgen : The night of the decision. Memories of family and youth . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1983.
  • Gerhard Brugmann (Ed.): Misdroy - Wyk - Hemmelmark. Three Christian conservative boarding schools . Chronos Verlag, Berlin-Kleinmachnow 2001, ISBN 3-931054-07-1 .
  • Gert von Pistohlkors : The "Baltic School" and the "Baltic Sea Boarding School Dune Castle" in Misdroy / Pomerania 1919 to 1945 . In: Michael Garleff (Ed.): Baltic German, Weimar Republic and Third Reich , published on behalf of the Karl Ernst von Baer Foundation in conjunction with the Baltic Historical Commission, vol. 2. Böhlau, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978- 3-412-12299-7 , pp. 151-208.

swell

  • Carl Hunnius: Report from the Balten School in Misdroy (annual reports on the individual school years), in the archive of the Carl Schirren Society .
  • Eberhard von der Lancken (ed.): Honor sheet of the fallen Baltic students . Self-published, Preetz 1982.
  • Sven Hasselblatt: Contributions to the history and nature of the Baltic School and the Baltic Sea boarding school, Dune Castle Misdroy . Self-published in 2004.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Gert von Pistohlkors: The "Baltenschule" and the "Baltic Sea Boarding School Dune Castle" in Misdroy / Pomerania 1919 to 1945 . In: Michael Garleff (Ed.): German Baltic States, Weimar Republic and Third Reich , Vol. 2. Böhlau, Cologne 2008, pp. 151–208, here p. 159.
  2. ↑ a b Gert von Pistohlkors: The "Baltic School" and the "Baltic Sea Boarding School Dune Castle" in Misdroy / Pomerania 1919 to 1945 . In: Michael Garleff (Ed.): German Baltic States, Weimar Republic and Third Reich , Vol. 2. Böhlau, Cologne 2008, pp. 151–208, here p. 151.
  3. ^ The Baltic educational institutions in Miedzyzdroje . In: Deutsches Adelsblatt. Journal of the German Nobility Association for the tasks of the Christian nobility , vol. 46 (1928).
  4. ↑ Call . In: Deutsches Adelsblatt. Journal of the German Nobility Association for the tasks of the Christian nobility , vol. 49 (1931). The appeal was the request to promote the Baltic School Misdroy and to consider it as a school for one's own children.
  5. ↑ Bernt von Kügelgen: The night of the decision. Memories of family and youth . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1983, pp. 260–263.
  6. ↑ Stephan Bitter, Hans-Heinrich Gurland (ed.): Invisible Church. Rudolf Gurland's experience of Bolshevism and National Socialism . CMZ, Rheinbach, 2nd, verb. Edition 2000. ISBN 3-87062-042-0 .