Canisius College Berlin

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Canisius College Berlin
The coat of arms of the Canisius College
type of school high school
School number 01P06
founding 1923
address

Tiergartenstrasse 30/31

place Berlin-Mitte (Tiergarten)
country Berlin
Country Germany
Coordinates 52 ° 30 '33 "  N , 13 ° 21' 17"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '33 "  N , 13 ° 21' 17"  E
carrier German province of the Jesuits as majority shareholder of the non-profit Canisius-Kolleg GmbH
student 880
Teachers 67
management Gabriele Hüdepohl
Website www.canisius-kolleg.de

The Canisius-Kolleg Berlin ( short : CK ) is a private and state-recognized Catholic high school in Berlin-Tiergarten, supported by the Jesuit order . It is named after St. Peter Canisius , a Jesuit from the 16th century.

The college was founded in 1923. In 1940 it was forced to close by the National Socialists . After the Second World War , the school reopened on June 1, 1945.

Jesuit College

The Canisius College in Berlin is one of three Jesuit colleges in Germany. The St. Blasien college (St. Blasien, Black Forest) and the Aloisius college (Bonn - Bad Godesberg) are grammar schools with boarding schools for boys and girls. The extracurricular youth work of the Ignatian Student Community (ISG) is characteristic of the Berlin Jesuit College. The "afternoon care" is an element of the open all-day care for all pupils in grades 5–9.

Sponsorship and funding

The Jesuit Order is the sponsor and founder of the Jesuit School, which was founded in 1923. To this end, the latter maintains a GmbH as the sponsor of the school and a foundation through which the pedagogical work is supported. The rector of the college has overall responsibility for the college and at the same time leads the local Jesuit community. He is the representative of the company, managing director and one of the shareholders of the GmbH.

As a “free” school, the Canisius College is dependent on the collection of school fees (according to self-assessment). Because of the Berlin School Act, only 93% of the comparable personnel costs are refinanced to the school authority. The remaining 7% personal contribution, all additional costs for facilities, activities and staff, are financed from school fees, donations, contributions and other subsidies.

For the afternoon care and for the activities of the ISG fees are charged. School fees and other contributions for socially disadvantaged families are financed by various grants from the institution. A "differentiation" according to social origin is thus excluded.

School profile

The Canisius-Kolleg is a high school with a Christian-humanistic character. It is part of the centuries-old educational tradition of the Jesuit Order, which was founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola. For the college, excellent education is inextricably linked with promoting personality. The individual pupil is an unmistakable personality who is allowed to develop their character here, to discover and develop their own talents. The educational program is based on this.

The basic grammar school (starting with the 5th grade) leads to the Abitur after 8 years.

The ISG at the Canisius College (formerly GCL)

According to Jesuit tradition, the Canisius College includes, in addition to the elementary grammar school, the Ignatian Student Community (ISG) as an extracurricular association for child and youth work. The previous institution was called GCL (Community of Christian Life). Alongside the school, it is an independent institution under the umbrella of the college. The school and ISG thus form the Canisius-Kolleg SJ. The ISG is a so-called city group of the youth association KSJ (Catholic Student Youth) in the BDKJ.

The youth work at the Jesuit College would like to offer children and young people a framework for purposeless encounters according to the principle “youth leads youth”. According to the school profile, space should be given to practice responsibility, self-organization and democracy and to experience the religious. Essentially, it is about making a contribution to the development of a free personality who can freely use their minds and who is capable of distinguishing and making decisions.

Around 700 of the college's students are members of the ISG; 71 of them are active in “Commitment to Others” (Fr. Pedro Arrupe SJ, former Superior General of the Jesuits) in responsible positions (as group leaders, as city group leaders, in the training team or in the practical support of leaders). (As of May 2020)

The ISG has its origins at the Roman College in 1563 as the so-called "Congregatio Mariana". The history of the Canisius College dates back to 1947. As part of the re-establishment of the Jesuit College after the forced closure, it was founded as a local branch of the youth associations of the Christian Life Community (J-GCL) in Berlin. In 2009 the city group left the J-GCL and joined the KSJ.

In the context of the abuse cases, Manfred von Richthofen , formerly a sports teacher at the college, called the afternoon activities of the “Congregatio” in the BZ as the center of the problem (“plague bite”), although he was later said to have been beaten. In the early 1980s, youth work at the college was democratised. B. also the spiritual leader has to be elected and can also be voted out. In 2004, a comprehensive protection concept was developed and put into effect for those who are also volunteers who are responsible for youth work. Since then, topics such as closeness and distance, feedback culture and the perception of and handling of border violations have played an elementary role in the five-year practical training of the group leaders.

Processing and clarification of cases of abuse

At the end of January 2010, a letter from the then rector Father Klaus Mertes was sent to more than 600 former students. This letter was about the fact that individual Jesuits had committed systematic sexual abuse at the Canisius College in the 1970s and 1980s . Without explaining this abuse in depth and form, Mertes wrote: "It was with deep shock and shame that I took note of these horrific, not just isolated, but systematic and long-term attacks." The content of the letter became public as a result of the Berlin article Morgenpost “Canisius-Kolleg: Cases of abuse at Berlin's elite school” known, which was honored with the guardian award due to its educational function and is considered to be the trigger for the abuse debate in spring 2010.

One of the two suspicious fathers admitted what had been accused of him and described himself as mentally ill at the time; From a legal point of view, however, the abuse is probably statute-barred. In the numerous presentations by the students and as a result of the detailed abuse reports by the officers, it was finally described in more detail what this abuse consisted of. In the case of a father who has since left the order and is now a married father, now living in Chile, it has been proven that he was active as a "sadist": The sports and religion teacher at that time hit selected students outside of class with reasons such as "naughtiness", "Disrupting the classroom" and Like. At times painful with a belt. There never was a sexual act, but beating children, especially in an institution like kindergarten and school, was forbidden and was no longer considered a minor offense. Ursula Raue, a lawyer commissioned by the Jesuit Order to investigate, spoke of around 30 victims. At the beginning of February, Father Stefan Dartmann SJ, Provincial of the United German Provinces of the Jesuit Order, gave another 15 cases of abuse at the Canisius College and at the Catholic Sankt Ansgar School in Hamburg, at the Jesuit College St. Blasien in the Black Forest and a still unknown number in Göttingen , Hildesheim , Spain and Chile known. On Spreeblick , the blog of Johnny Haeusler , himself a graduate of the Canisius Kolleg, many former students have left comments that suggest that the allegations were known within the school, but were ignored. Father Karl Heinz Fischer SJ, rector of the college between April 1981 and June 1989, confirmed that he had become aware of incidents as early as 1981. Some abuse victims have organized themselves together with the injured from other Jesuit institutions in the Forum Eckiger Tisch .

The process has since expanded into a nationwide scandal that is the focus of media interest. Among others, the well-known Jesuit Bernhard Ehlen , at times a teacher at the Canisius College, had to admit several cases of abuse in Hanover. Because of the abuse scandal, the German bishops were under pressure to act; the German Bishops' Conference dealt with the topic at its general assembly from February 22nd to 25th, 2010 in Freiburg im Breisgau . The institution did not receive any compensation until April 2012.

Former students

literature

Web links

Commons : Canisius-Colleg  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Head of the Canisius College. Retrieved August 18, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b school directory. In: berlin.de. January 18, 2017, accessed July 10, 2020 .
  3. ^ Head of the Canisius College. In: canisius.de. June 18, 2019, accessed August 18, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Canisius-Kolleg: Cases of abuse at Berlin's elite school . In: Berliner Morgenpost , January 28, 2010; Title page