Domanial school

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Map of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland after the First World War

Domanial schools emerged as a result of the First World War in the Saar area , which was ruled by the League of Nations from 1920 to 1935 in accordance with Articles 45 to 50 of the Versailles Treaty (referred to there as "Territoire du Bassin de la Sarre") . In 1920 he gave France the mandate to administer the Saar region , which also gave France the right to run its own schools in the Saar region. These schools, originally intended for the children of the employees of the French mines administration (Administration des mines domaniales françaises), are known as domanial schools and were partly opened by the French mining administration for German primary school children or set up especially for them.

Founding history

The Domanial Schools ( Écoles Domaniales ) were an instrument of the French occupying power in the context of the League of Nations mandate, which was limited to 15 years, at the end of which the Saar residents were to vote on the future of their country. The children were to be familiarized with the French language and culture in the domain schools, which mostly taught in French, in the hope that years later they would vote for the Saar to remain with France in the 1935 vote.

“In their reports to the French Foreign Ministry, the heads of the French schools Gauthier, as well as the member of the government commission Morize, made it clear that the children of the domain schools should be won over to the French cause. In the 1935 Saar referendum, the students would certainly be more likely to vote for a connection to France. The French MP Desirée Ferry emphasized [in February 1923] that the advertising measures for the domanial schools were insufficient and that the pressure on the Saarland workers in the mine administration had to be increased. "

The popularly French schools named Domanianschulen were allowed under the Versailles Treaty and should be open to children of employees of the French mining administration. The schools "were only built at pit locations and only on the pit's own site and at the expense of the individual pits". However, the mining administration went beyond the limitation of the target group to the children of the mine administration employees and opened the schools for all primary school children. From 1920 onwards, a total of 24 domain schools were founded .

No. place opening Pupil 1929 Pupil 1932 Pupil 1934
1 Clarenthal 24 59 28
2 Dillingen / Saar 1921 115 95 85
3 Dudweiler 147 250 83
4th Elversberg 225 319 269
5 Fenne (Völklingen) 61 64 48
6th Schiffweiler-Heiligenwald November 22, 1922 133 135 92
7th Hostenbach 45 126 71
8th Pit speeches 1922/23 205 166 113
9 Luisenthal (Völklingen) 70 101
10 Velsen mine 1925 223 326 193
11 Merchweiler 52 60
12 Neunkirchen 62 189 61
13 Püttlingen May 1924 89 142 104
14th Saarbrücken city 1921 38 42 118
15th Hunting joy 95 192 62
16 Saarlouis 1920 40 139 134
17th Angel catch 37 26th
18th St. Ingbert Easter 1923 95 42
19th Advertising 24 9
20th Schiffweiler 120 53
21st Sulzbach 1920 300 383 336
22nd Völklingen Easter 1921 57 66 45
23 Von der Heydt 43 70 27
24 Wiebelskirchen 66 84
25th Maybach This school is mentioned by Ilgemann without further information.
Sum of the
domain students		 1902 3227 2244
Students at
German elementary schools		 105630 117949 119630
Percentage of domain
students		 2.0 3.8 2.6

School fight

Krebs speaks of a high of 4400 pupils at domanial schools in 1924, Ilgemann from 5000 to 5300 in 1925. The table shows how much the number of pupils fell in the following years and how insignificant it compared to the number of pupils were in German schools. It was of little help that “the mine administration provided the schools with better financial resources than comparable German elementary schools and granted special services as an incentive for pupils and parents, such as free learning materials, bonuses and gifts, preferential allocation of apartments and placement of jobs, etc. Indeed the French state invested considerable funds in these schools. "

The fact that these measures were insufficient to attract children to the domanial schools in a noteworthy way was due to the French occupation policy and statements such as those of the Member of Parliament Desirée Ferry, already quoted above. In the Saar region it was feared that France - not only with its school plans - “intended a certain 'acculturation', a kind of forced cultural adjustment ('Penétration culturelle') to the French mentality. A fear that, widely exploited by nationalist circles, was to play a major role in the later voting next to the mine expropriation. ”Out of this feeling,“ Miners and their families, the target group of Domanial schools, rejected the forms and contents of the lessons as ideologically one-sided . The school policy of the Mines Domaniales was also perceived by the general population as indoctrination and an impermissible interference in contemporary German schooling on the Saar. The attempt at school policy by the Mines Domaniales did not lead to a pro-French building of trust, but to the opposite reaction: From then on, everything was done in the state German schools of the Saar region that could help the children to develop their national identity as Germans. In 1923 the school political situation worsened due to the Saar miners' strike (February to May 1923), which was only a superficial struggle for wages. "

As a result, the “children in domain schools were used as socio-political maneuvering mass”, attacks against domain students increased, sponsors of the schools were threatened with disadvantages and persecution, and especially the miners, whose children the schools were aimed at, got between the fronts.

“The miners were dependent on the monopoly employer Mines Domaniales as employees if they didn't want to leave their home with their families. The miners were threatened not to invest their sons in the mines later (to be employed as workers) if they did not attend the domain schools, and the children concerned were rewarded with a cash gift of 10 Frs. Officially, the mine administration denied this approach. This approach of the French mining treasury contributed to the further hardening of the political fronts. [..] Anyone who de-registered his children from domain schools was considered a traitor to the French employer and lost his job. Anyone who sent them to these schools was considered a traitor to the German cause and was threatened by the German Front that the family would have to leave the Saar area after 1935 if their children continued to attend the Domanial school. "

The closer it got to the day of the Saar referendum, the more aggressive the propaganda against France and the Domanial schools became, as Ilgemann describes using Maybach as an example. "In a climate of open terror, the League of Nations government was no longer able to guarantee the domanial students and their relatives a feeling of security and so in 1934 there was a real mass exodus from the domanial school, which collapsed two days before the Saar referendum."

Ilgemann assumes that between 1920 and 1935 the Saarlanders were materially better off than the Reich population, "and yet the propaganda attacked the alleged arch enemy France". The driving force behind the campaign was Hermann Röchling , who was convicted as a war criminal after the First World War , and the German Front that he helped to establish . When Kommerzienrat Knöchting was only slightly alienated, Gustav Regulator had him proclaim the strategy of the Domanial school opponents in his 1934 published “Agitations- und Heimatroman Im Kreufeuer ” in a speech to his executives: “The French Domanial School must be presented as a chamber of terror for everyone who is Child dares to send. Threaten with dismissal! We have to show ourselves as leaders outside of the office. "

In real life, Röchling took over responsibility for an anonymous leaflet to the German fathers in 1933 ! German mothers! , which agitated nationalist against the visit of French schools . This leaflet stated:

“WHO DOES THE FRENCH SCHOOL SERVE!
ONLY THE FRENCH VIOLENCE POLITICS AND THEIR DESIRE TO CONQUER!
ONLY THE SPITZELN AND DRIVERS WHO LIVE FROM IT!
You know the unscrupulous agitators who broke into your apartment to advertise. You know the chiefs of French propaganda, from whom all Germans disdain. You know the braggers of the French mine administration who robbed your comrades of work and bread. You know you who had your upright friend and family thrown out of their apartment. You don't want to emigrate to Lorraine in 1935 like so many people who are already preparing their retreat to France? You know the sad fate of the Rhenish separatists who now have to live crammed together in the barracks of Metz and Diedenhofen, despised and shunned by everyone. Do you know that the French school costs millions and millions annually by which your meager wages are cut.
WHERE DOES YOUR CHILD BELONG - IN THE GERMAN SCHOOL!
To your school! To your fathers school! To the school of your fellow citizens! In the school of the German language and German spirit!
GERMAN MAN! GERMAN WOMAN!
It's about your child's honor! It's about the future of your child! It's about your German name, your national honor! It's about the honor and future of the Far German Saar people!
THINK OF 1935!
Then you want to return to our German brothers and sisters with a clear conscience! Then your child shouldn't have to return to German school with a flaw! Should your children then become your accusers? Then surely you don't want to belong to the despised bunch of those whose fatherland has been selling for a lentil dish? Then you surely don't want to stand there without friends, lonely and abandoned, because you placed yourself outside the fighting front of your German national community during the time of need in the Saarland!
IT'S STILL TIME! - BUT NOT LONGER.
Let your child in the German school! Do not register the newcomer to the French school! Take your child out of the French school and back to the German elementary school immediately! Your children and your people will thank you one day! "

The seeds came up, and on January 13, 1935, 90.73% of all Saarlanders voted for annexation to the German Reich. This was based not only on massive incitement and propaganda from the right, but also on "an extreme misjudgment of the regional mentality on the part of France", which made the forced establishment of domain schools an ideological boomerang.

Domanial schools and emigration

Even less than about the Domanialschulen themselves, about their role as a temporary protective and work for political refugees from is Nazi state known to the Saar plebiscite found a reasonably safe place to live here. One of the few who reported about it was Heinrich Rodenstein . After he was released from school, Rodenstein emigrated to Holland in July 1933. With the help of the Dutch teachers' union, he organized his move to the Saar area in November 1933. Here he worked as a teacher at two domain schools in 1933/34 and lived with his wife Marta in the emigrant home in the Von der Heydt community . He himself writes about it: “On November 20, 1933 I applied to the mine administration for employment at a domanial school. In addition to the job opportunity, I also saw a political and educational task. My wife brought my certificates, employment and discharge papers with her when she left for Holland. At the beginning of January 1934 I was informed that I would be employed at the Domanialschule in Talstraße in Saarbrücken. On February 1, 1934, I was transferred to the Domanial School in Saarlouis, where I stayed until we emigrated to France. ”Rodenstein was aware that“ these schools [represented] a cultural and political flanking of the French annectionist policy ”. But he also recognized a change in the “greatly reduced” student body in the period after 1933. “In addition to the children of the real 'Francophiles', the children of all Nazi opponents of the status quo supporters, especially the Jews, the socialists and Communists of all shades. The mine management also had to ensure that Nazi teachers did not end up in the domanial schools. ”On January 16, 1935, the day after the Saar referendum,“ no more children came to the domanial school in Saarlouis ”. In February 1935 the Rodensteins left the Saar region and went into exile in France.

The former teacher students and members of the local socialist student group Hermann and Grete Ebeling , who also came from Braunschweig, fled to Saarland, where Hermann Ebeling was able to teach as a teacher at domanial schools from November 3, 1933 to March 1, 1935 .

literature

The domain schools are largely unexplored to this day. Apart from the two articles by Krebs and Ilgemann, there are no more recent works. In the catalog of the German National Library , the keyword Dominialschule does not lead to any hits, and WorldCat only lists two publications, but these offer only limited source material. The extensive bibliography that Ilgemann added to his contribution and which refers to extensive source material is helpful for individual aspects.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arnold Ilgemann: "French schools" , pdf page 5
  2. ↑ a b Arnold Ilgemann: "French schools" , pdf page 2
  3. ↑ Gerhild Krebs: Domanialschulen in the Saar area , pdf page 1
  4. ↑ Arnold Ilgemann: "French schools" , pdf page 3
  5. ↑ This table is based on the table reprinted by Arnold Ilgemann (pdf page 3) (no source is given there). The opening dates come partly from Ilgemann, partly from internet research.
  6. ↑ Heinrich Rodenstein also taught at this school in Talstrasse in January 1934 before he was transferred to the Domanialschule in Saarlouis. ( Heinrich Rodenstein: Saar area )
  7. ↑ Heinrich Rodenbstein taught here from February 1, 1934 until the Saar referendum in 1935. ( Heinrich Rodenstein: Saar area )
  8. ↑ a b c Arnold Ilgemann: "French schools" , pdf page 10
  9. ↑ Arnold Ilgemann: "French schools" , pdf page 5-6
  10. ^ Horst Wilhelm: Saar vote 1935: Home to the Reich! 75 years ago, the Saarlanders decided in favor of Germany , in: Unser Blättsche , issue 61, February 2010
  11. ↑ a b Gerhild Krebs: Domanial schools in the Saar area , pdf page 2
  12. ↑ Gerhild Krebs: Domanialschulen in the Saar area , pdf-pages 2-3
  13. ↑ Arnold Ilgemann: "French schools" , pdf page 11
  14. ^ Gerhild Krebs: Gustav-Regulator-Stein
  15. ↑ Gustav Regulator: In the Crossfire (online)
  16. ↑ See: Wolfgang von Hippel: Hermann Röchling 1872–1955. A large German industrialist between business and politics. Facets of a life in turbulent times , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-525-31062-5 , here especially section IV: 'Saar fight' 1919-1935 - a fight on several fronts , and there chapters 17 and 18 .
  17. ↑ Quoted from Arnold Ilgemann: "Franzosenschulen" , pdf pages 18-19
  18. ↑ Gerhild Krebs: Domanialschulen in the Saar area , pdf page 3
  19. ↑ Bernhild Vögel: Dismissed, persecuted, returned - socialist teachers from the state of Braunschweig between the Weimar Republic and the post-war period , in: Frank Ehrhardt (Heraqus donor on behalf of the Other History Working Group): Paths of life under dictatorship. Contributions to the history of Braunschweig under National Socialism , Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig, 2007, ISBN 978-3-937664-59-0 , p. 80
  20. ^ Heinrich Rodenstein: Saar area
  21. ^ Heinrich Rodenstein: Domanialschulen
  22. ^ Bundesarchiv Koblenz: Hermann Ebeling estate, curriculum vitae from 1941, inventory N 1374/20. The file also contains a certificate from the head of the department for general education of the French state mines of the Saarland dated January 31, 1935, issued in Saarbrücken, that Ebeling's assignment as "substitute teacher at the schools opened by France in the Saarland through the Treaty of Versailles" approved.