Hochwaldhausen Mountain School

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bergschule Hochwaldhausen was a reform school in the high Vogelsberg that existed between 1921 and 1929 . It was under the direction of Otto Hermann Steche (1879–1945). The Dürer School was located in the same place from 1912 to 1920 . The mountain school has also become known through its two students, Klaus and Erika Mann .

Emergence

At the end of 1920, the Dürerschule in Hochwaldhausen was closed as a result of a scandal. Her head, Georg Hellmuth Neuendorff , had recently been convicted of sexual abuse of several schoolgirls.

Many former students of the Dürerschule regretted the closure of the school, which had represented a home for them for several years . Among them was Siegfried Streckfus, who meanwhile studied at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . His professor Otto Steche knew Hochwaldhausen from previous vacations. Streckfus was able to win him over to founding a new school.

At the beginning of 1921 Otto Steche bought the property of the Dürerschule in Hochwaldhausen and opened a new school, the mountain school . After the end of the inflation in 1923 , the vacant Zum Felsenmeer spa hotel in Hochwaldhausen was purchased, which was converted for school purposes ( location ).

The Dürerschule building was also used by the mountain school

Pedagogical concept and school operation

Like its predecessor, the mountain school was a boarding school . In contrast to the Dürerschule , however, the focus was on the work school concept . The skill was cultivated in handicrafts, agriculture and horticulture. The further curriculum was that of a reform high school. For a fee, the school buildings were also available as a rest home for lecturers at Frankfurt University during the summer vacation. A community ideology with echoes of the Völkische movement was decisive .

Walter Ackermann was one of the temporary teachers at the mountain school .

Two prominent students

As in the case of the Dürer school , so also was Bergschule primarily of children of upscale educated classes visited. The reform school achieved fame in the small Vogelsberg village because Klaus and Erika Mann, two children of Thomas Mann , were among its students for around three months.

In Munich , Klaus and Erika Mann belonged to a youth gang, the so-called "Herzogpark gang". Because of their sometimes very malicious pranks, father Thomas Mann decided to initially send his two children to boarding school in the country. The choice fell on Hochwaldhausen probably not by chance, as Thomas Mann had already publicly supported the establishment of the Dürerschule .

From April to July 1922, Klaus Mann and his sister Erika attended the mountain school . Klaus Mann described this period in his 1942 American exile published autobiography The Turning Point (dt .: The turning point ). In retrospect, he criticized the nationalistic and völkisch attitudes of several classmates, which were already pointing towards National Socialism. In addition, the almost fifty-year-old Steche did not exactly embody a representative of the youth movement . But Klaus Mann also took a liking to the student community in the “complex of modest wooden houses and bungalows in a tart, idyllic landscape”.

Both left the mountain school after just four months , after the upper classes had been disbanded because of the “anarchist” disobedience of the older students. Klaus Mann then attended the Odenwald School near Heppenheim , Erika Mann the Luisengymnasium in Munich.

End of the mountain school

The mountain school was closed in 1929, probably due to economic difficulties . The increasing age of Steches could also have played a role. A new reform school at the Hochwaldhausen location no longer emerged. The school buildings that have survived to this day were used for residential and hotel purposes.

See also

literature

  • Gerhard Kalkhof: The history of the climatic health resort Ilbeshausen-Hochwaldhausen. Grebenhain 1993

Coordinates: 50 ° 31 ′ 5.8 ″  N , 9 ° 18 ′ 45.6 ″  E