Altona high school

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Altona high school
Gymnasium Altona.jpg
The main building of the Altona high school in winter 2015
type of school high school
founding 1882
address

Hohenzollernring 57-61

place Hamburg
country Hamburg
Country Germany
Coordinates 53 ° 33 '6 "  N , 9 ° 54' 57"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 33 '6 "  N , 9 ° 54' 57"  E
carrier Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
student 1002 As of 2017
Teachers 105 As of 2017
management Anja Lindenau
Website www.gymaltona.de

The Altona high school is a high school in Hamburg with a focus on science , language, media and music. The school was founded in Ottensen in 1882 as a secondary school. After being converted into a grammar school, the school was seen as an alternative to the old-language Christianeum . In 1968 the "mathematical and natural science high school for boys in Altona" was also opened for girls. Until then, girls had to rely on the Allee grammar school in the neighboring Altona-Altstadt district . In 2017, the grammar school was attended by around 1000 students in grades 5 to 12. Since 1978, the school has offered the opportunity to acquire a professional qualification to become a chemical-technical assistant in parallel with the Abitur .

Since the introduction of the upper level profile in 2009, students in the upper level have been able to choose between four profiles with different focuses.

building

The school building on Hohenzollernring was designed by the city master builder Emil Brandt . Construction began in 1908 and the completed building was inaugurated in 1910. At that time it was the most expensive and most magnificent school building in Germany. Because of its splendid ornaments and the general conception, the building can be assigned to the Wilhelmine style. The building is divided into 3 floors. The auditorium is on the 2nd floor and has an eye-catching, temple-like dome, which is intended to create the impression of being a self-supporting stone structure built according to traditional methods. In fact, this consists of a thin, insulated material that is attached to the roof structure with steel cables and is thus supported. In the sandstone cladding of the facade of the building there are numerous ornaments that are intended to indicate the scientific, technical and Protestant orientation of the school. One example are the life-size figures that adorn the main entrance. On the right side is Copernicus , who symbolizes the scientific orientation and on the left side Luther , representative of the Protestant orientation.

Upper level profile

The Gymnasium Altona offers four different profiles with different focuses for the upper level.

  • The Kulturwelten profile specializes in Spanish and is combined with a social subject.
  • The Society and Media profile focuses on politics-society-economy, combined with the subjects of art, music and DSP.
  • The Matter, People, Technology profile mainly works in the school's chemistry laboratory and is combined with the subject of history.
  • The human and environment profile focuses on biology combined with geography.

In addition to the profile-giving subjects, the students can freely choose other courses. The only condition is that the following fields of activity are covered by at least one subject:

  • Task field I : linguistic-literary-artistic-musical
  • Task field II : social science
  • Task III : mathematical-scientific-technical

Chemical-technical assistance

Since 1978, the Altona high school has offered the option of a dual qualification course. In addition to the Abitur, the students receive a completed vocational training to become a chemical-technical assistant (CTA). Pupils from upper secondary schools in Hamburg can take part in the training. Theoretical training takes place in the Altona grammar school and practical training in the chemistry laboratories in the attached "House of Chemistry".

With the start of training in the 10th grade, a practically oriented method course is completed in the chemistry laboratory, which is then followed, in the study level, by chemical analysis and physical-technical analysis. The 5th semester includes the subjects of organic synthesis, environmental analysis, instrumental analysis and food analysis and serves to deepen chemical knowledge and to prepare for the final examination. The CTA training takes a total of three and a half years.

Projects

bazaar

Almost every year the Altona high school organizes a Christmas bazaar at the end of November, where the pupils sell homemade Christmas trinkets. The entire proceeds will be donated to social institutions, from 2012 to 2016 for the organization Basis & Woge eV, which supports street children in Hamburg and uses the money to finance furniture, games and the expansion of rooms, among other things.

Erasmus +

The Gymnasium Altona has been part of an international school partnership since 2009 and has taken part in the Erasmus + project twice . The last project under the Comenius program ended in 2015.

One of the aims of the current project was to secure European funding for 2015–2016 and thus have resources for intercultural exchange. In 2016, the Altona high school hosted pupils and teachers from the respective partner schools. In addition, two meetings with students and teachers are to take place in France and southern Italy in 2017.

There are four partner schools: the “Lycée général et technologique Jean-Baptiste De Baudre” (France), the “IES San Sebastián” (Spain), the “IS Benedetti Tommaseo” (Venice, Italy) and the “Majorana Laterza” (Putignano , Italy). Communication takes place via email and social networks. In the 2010s, there were three topics that students worked on. The goal is international products. The first project was called "The Sea" with the sub-item "Cities and Cultures". Next came the topic “The future, your / my / our business.” For this purpose, the biology and physics courses were devoted to the question “Life on Mars?” And with the support of funding we built a Mars rover. Pupils from the French school dealt with the topic “Can cars fly?”. The theme of the current Erasmus project is "The Art of Recycling". The aim of this project is to raise environmental awareness in schools, e.g. B. through waste separation and waste avoidance, recycling, upcycling, and that the participating students and teachers are encouraged to rethink their consumer behavior and to live more consciously. Spain would like to develop an exchange platform for this, on which goods can be exchanged in order to reduce the massive waste. Furthermore, there were story, photo, illustration and logo competitions for each of the projects.

However, there are also some differences between Comenius and Erasmus +. In the case of the Comenius projects, those involved were awarded a lump sum of 20,000 to 22,000 euros. At least 24 mobilities had to be created from the money in the two years. The main focus was on the European concept.

There were some small changes to Erasmus + in 2018. The monetary allowance has been reduced and there are now only eight trips for teachers and six for students. For this, 6,000 euros are made available for project management. The main focus here is on international projects.

WLAN project

The Altona high school has been part of the “Start in the Next Generation” pilot project of the school and vocational training authority since 2014 and is one of six schools in Hamburg (as of October 2015) that has WiFi routers. These were installed in almost every room in the school and enable the Altona grammar school to access the Internet during the entire course. The aim is to supplement and enrich learning through the well-considered and efficient handling of files, data, information and other media. Another central aspect is the use of a learning platform that is supposed to help teachers and students to organize themselves, their own work and school communication.

Social internship

Since 2016, it has been possible for the 10th grade to complete a two-week social internship before the summer vacation. The students themselves are responsible for finding an internship, for example in the areas of care for the elderly, working with the disabled or helping refugees. The social internship should help to gain social experience, to increase the ability to empathize, to develop awareness of volunteer work and to support other people.

Juice shop in the Altona high school

The so-called "juice shop" in the basement of the main building offers a central meeting point. It was founded by parents in 1977 in the upper school building to offer students affordable snacks. In addition, this place serves as a relaxation space for students and teachers. The juice shop has now been moved to the main building. He is supplied with rolls by a baker, which are then filled and sold by parents and grandparents. The "juice shop" works at cost price.

History of the Altona high school from 1858 to 2016

Foundation phase

School founder Friedrich Fischer

The school traces its existence back to the founding of the state secondary school in 1882 at the latest since the fiftieth anniversary of 1932 . In the course of time, in connection with the development of general school policy, it changed its name, its educational mandate and its location several times, but not its character as an educational institution for the aspiring middle and sometimes lower classes of Ottensen and its wider surroundings.

The actual roots of the school go back to the year 1858, when the private teacher Friedrich Fischer founded a private teaching institution in the Kirchentwiete. In Fischer's time there was already a public school near the Christian Church where reading and writing were taught. There were also several private schools for senior sons and daughters. The founding of the school by Friedrich Fischer proved to be particularly successful, so that in the first ten years all reasonably wealthy parents living in Ottensen and Neumühlen sent their sons to this institution, with the exception of the few who wanted to prepare for university. Classes began in 1859 with 13 eight- to fourteen-year-old students, divided into three classes, in the subjects religion, history, mathematics, ordinary arithmetic, German, French, English, calligraphy, drawing, singing, gymnastics and, if desired, Danish, Spanish , Latin.

The " one year " made it difficult for Friedrich Fischer's facility. Anyone in Prussia who had passed the state secondary school leaving certificate and was able to pay for their own maintenance was not subject to military service for the usual two to three years, but only for one year and left the army as an officer in the reserve. When the demand for its own state secondary school, which was allowed to award the Mittlere Reife, grew because the students migrated to Altona, the administration of the city of Ottensen-Neumühlen finally agreed to buy Fritz Fischer's private school and expand it into a secondary school . Fischer should be their leader. However, he died of heart failure shortly before the contract was signed. His widow then sold the house in 1875.

School building in Rothestrasse

In a short period of time, after the school was bought by the city of Ottensen, state-certified teachers were also employed. At the beginning of 1876, August Strehlow was appointed head of the two new secondary schools (for boys and girls), which moved into their new building in Rothestraße in 1878 after a transitional period in rented living spaces on Ottenser Marktplatz (building of today's Rothestraße primary school). With great dedication he operated the expansion of the middle school into a higher middle school without Latin. Soon he was teaching according to the Realschule curriculum. In tough negotiations with the local administration about questions of financing and after a quality check by the Prussian education authority in Pinneberg, it was recognized as a secondary school in 1882. E. (under development). The school had about 230 students. After the first successful final exams of the Realschule, the institution was recognized as a full Realschule in 1885. She was authorized to issue a certificate for one year of military service.

Wilhelmine time

School building in Bleickenallee

Before 1889, the recognized secondary school moved into a new building on Treskowallee (today Bleickenallee) and by 1914 the number of students had increased to over 700. The school-political orientation of the headmaster August Strehlow, who had been in office since 1876, was modern, oriented towards trade and industry, at the same time influenced by Christian nationalism and devoted to the monarchy. Strehlow had studied theology, but without a pedagogical exam, and was therefore only able to take over the direction of a higher school with a special permit that he had received from the minister responsible for his services.

At the turn of the century, a commercial science department was assigned to the school with the subjects of business arithmetic, chemistry, Spanish, law and shorthand . This strengthened the school's reformist orientation compared to the traditional grammar schools. In 1905, the Prussian Ministry of Education granted permission to expand the school as a full establishment ( Oberrealschule ). The Abitur from a secondary school entitles the holder to take up university studies.

In 1910, what is now the main building of the school on Hohenzollernring , built by city architect Emil Brandt in Wilhelmine style , was inaugurated. The impressive entrance facade of the central building has become an object of identification for the school community over the years. It can be found on almost all the titles of school newspapers, posters for events and today also in the school's stylized logo.

The facility with scientific laboratories allowed modern science lessons in which the students could experiment themselves in their own places.

Student experiments in physics class

August Strehlow managed the school until his retirement in 1917. The Wilhelmine spirit of the school was so pronounced that at the beginning of the war in 1914 all students in the top two classes volunteered for military service. The two classes of the upper prima were dissolved. During the war years, the school organized a lively war and hero propaganda. 221 former students were killed in the world war, which was generally regarded in the nationalistic sense as a patriotic victim. The German national and republic hostile attitude at the school also became clear when in 1919, after the revolution, the new Prussian minister of education asked the students to follow the example of the workers 'and soldiers' councils and to form a student council. The majority of the student body rejected this request. The invitation of the Social Democrat-led government to the teachers, in the spirit of the new freedom, not to see themselves as superiors but as older comrades of their students, met with incomprehension and rejection.

Weimar years

The upheavals that took place at the beginning of the time of Fritz Breucker, Strehlow's successor in the office of headmaster, had no impact on school operations.

Student caricature 1942

Peter Meyer , the son of a fisherman from Altenwerder, was appointed initially as Breucker’s deputy, and then mainly responsible from 1931 . Meyer had studied mathematics and physics in Kiel and Göttingen and worked intensively on reform pedagogy didactics and methodology of the natural sciences in Hamburg and Altona. Since 1920 he has been teaching at the OJA. The agency justified his appointment as director with his natural leadership skills and his clear judgment of people and things. Meyer's declared educational goal was obedient students who, as free citizens, see their best in serving the fatherland faithfully in good and bad days.

Like his predecessor, Peter Meyer was involved in governing bodies of the Protestant Church. As a conservative and avowed Christian, he refused to join the NSDAP and its branches until the end of Nazi rule . In May 1930, at a time when the phase of the dissolution of the Weimar Republic began, a memorial by the Altona artist Friedrich Westphal was unveiled in the OJA auditorium. The memorial showed a naked young man as the ideal figure of a young German man, with arms outstretched in self-sacrifice. Until 1945, all high school graduates laid wreaths in front of the memorial.

Sacrifice and devotion to the nation became the school's guiding educational goals. Former students put it this way: As a senior high school student, you were simply right-wing and against the Weimar Republic. The few who did not share this right-wing conservative and nationalist elite thinking had no voice. In the school's archives, in the documents available and in the memories of the alumni, there are almost no other settings. The later communist and murdered Trotskyist functionary Rudolf Klement , who passed the school leaving examination at the OJA in 1927, left hardly any traces. The Catholic Center Party was also meaningless in Protestant Altona.

School under National Socialism

The National Socialist ideology was able to successfully establish itself at the school as a whole. There was no conscious political resistance.

The first action of National Socialism in cooperation with the school was the funeral service for the teacher and SS storm leader Ernst-Wilhelm Chemnitz. On February 26, 1933, he suffered a heart attack while preparing for a demonstration. In consultation with the family, the SS , the NSDAP and the school, a joint funeral procession was carried out in Altona.

The caretaker Raloff, a member of the SPD and member of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold , actively showed his resistance to the spreading National Socialism. He refused to display the swastika flag and was dismissed from the service as a result.

From 1927 to 1943 Peter Meyer was headmaster of the school. In the midst of the synchronized society, he tolerated individual expressions of life by his students and colleagues and took action against interventions by the school authorities or the Hitler Youth in the management of his school. When Albert Henze took over the school administration in 1941, the situation changed. With increased actions by the Gestapo, especially against the so-called swing youth , high school supervisors Herbert Saß and Albert Henze were able to enforce a punishment transfer in 1943. Meyer was not in a position to lead the college sufficiently tightly to bring about a consensus among colleagues on the worldview of the National Socialists, so the reason for the measure. Leo Lüders was the new headmaster until the end of the war .

The school archives do not contain any data on the deportations of schoolchildren or particular forms of anti-Semitism or persecution of Jews . The biology class was expanded to include the subject of race theory .

Occupation and denazification

On July 7, 1945, Peter Meyer was reinstated as headmaster by the British military government . The school building was confiscated by this, so that the lessons had to take place in shifts in the parish hall of the Christian church . The first post-war high school diploma was also taken here.

Only a few contemporary topics were dealt with in class, such as the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the meeting of the first elected citizens . The National Socialist past that had just ended was largely not dealt with. The Nazi period was not dealt with except in the marginal notes of the education reports of the high school graduates. These side notes only included statements such as B. the thoughtless entry into the Hitler Youth, the glory on board a warship or the experiences of war as an enrichment of life. The history lessons of the first few years were even explicitly allowed to deal only with antiquity , even by official order . Only this historical epoch was considered harmless.

The teachers had to face the denazification procedures ordered by the occupying powers . Individuals were initially fired by the British-run administration and then had to plead for their reinstatement before the agency's advisory committee. They relied on exonerating statements from friends and colleagues. These so-called Persilscheine almost all came from Peter Meyer or Robert Grosse . In most cases, this advocacy led to the rehabilitation of the person concerned.

coping with the past

Peter Meyer retired in 1954. The complete recovery of the school building from the British occupying forces was only possible a year later. Two more years later, the school, which was now called "Gymnasium für Jungs Altona", celebrated its 75th anniversary under the direction of Wilhelm Hübener, a member of the college since 1927. In an article the length of one page, the new headmaster wrote in the Festschrift about the past 25 years, without going into the school's past of school politics or the problems of dealing with National Socialism. It was only about the fate of the building, which had to be left in 1939 and was only recently relocated, not about the fate of the people. Not even Peter Meyer was reported. But the past has not been completely excluded. Just in time for the anniversary, the years 1939 and 1945 were added to the memorial described above (“Germany must live and if we must die!”). Again over 200 students had just died in one world war. But not only did the past not come to terms with, this past was even continued ideally, perhaps because there was nothing else to do and just continued as before. - At least this should lead to an internal school discussion in the following years, which contributed to the politicization of the student body and the democratization of school life. Coping with the past, or at least the attempt to do so, was largely reserved for the later generations at the Altona High School.

Front pages of the school newspaper "57-61"

A year after the anniversary and the addition of the criminal World War II years to the school's war memorial, a public panel discussion was held in the school auditorium in May 1958. Nine students who represented different positions had volunteered for the interview. The critics of the memorial remained with their argument that Lersch's saying sounds hollow like the senseless death, that the legacy of the dead consists rather in a warning of further wars, initially in a minority. But in itself the event of a panel discussion marked the beginning of a democratic break in culture that deepened in the following years.

The new path that was taken with the implementation of an open and public panel discussion continued with the creation of a school newspaper. From 1960 to 1967, a few issues of "57-61" were published annually in loose succession, named after the house number of the school on Hohenzollernring. It was the first, but also the last school publication that was published over a longer period by changing school editors. Before there were only so-called beer newspapers from high school graduates, in which the teachers and classmates were ridiculed. Afterwards there were always new foundations, but each of them could only last for a short time. "57-61" was the school policy discussion forum of the sixties at the Altona high school. Each issue was lavishly designed as a magazine with artistic graphics, mostly with motifs of the building, in the small A5 format. The discussion about the monument was taken up in the first year of publication. The high school student Heiko Peters wrote that the war of the German Wehrmacht had been waged against Germany, namely for a gang of criminals. The only people who fought for Germany were the people in the resistance. This clairvoyant position was not to prevail throughout German society until decades later after the Weizsäcker speech and after the Wehrmacht exhibition . The memorial was also discussed in class. When the voices of protest increased in the school newspaper, in individual resolutions, in the parents' council and in the college, it was removed in 1968 after an expert report by the curator had found it to be of little artistic value. It was also said that the girls who were new to school could not be expected to work with the naked youth. - One of the editors in the last class in 1967 was the ninth grader Peter Zamory , who became head of the school in upper school and worked in the SDS student organization. From 1992 to 2001 Zamory was a member of the GAL's citizenry and its health policy spokesman.

School reform and anti-authoritarian phase

From 1965 onwards the new headmaster Hans-Peter Jorzick played a decisive role in the general opening of the school. His father had already been a teacher in East Prussia . The war events brought him to Hamburg, where he also studied. After twelve years at the Schlee School , he was promoted to headmaster at the Altona high school. Although he only ran the school until the end of the 1960s, he set the tone. When he came to school at the beginning of his office, he experienced a socially mixed student body, partly from the factory and industrial areas of Ottensen, partly from the river and harbor, partly from the residential areas in the west. Jorzick's goal was to bring the school closer to the social, professional and political realities of life. He opened the school to girls in 1968 (coeducation), brought the first female teacher to his school and, in cooperation with the trade school for energy technology in Museumstrasse, accepted two classes from the one-year technical college for electrical engineers as a separate department at the grammar school. He was particularly interested in the development of appropriate forms of learning and teaching. He had differentiated lessons tried out in the observation stage and offered afternoon schoolwork. Just as modern and of current importance was his express train in the middle school (in eight years to the Abitur). The high point of his reforms was his special Altona model of the reformed upper level, for which he got his own building thanks to the growing number of students, the former technical school for nutrition and housekeeping in Bleickenallee 5.Features were flexible block lessons, cross-year groups, study-related forms of work, options for the students, team-teaching. Jorzick also tolerated teaching projects offered and carried out by students, e.g. B. on Marxism and revolution. The main building on Hohenzollernring was redesigned with specialist and differentiation rooms. He was quickly brought into the authority as a high school supervisor with a focus on “development of the reformed upper school”.

In the 1960s, through many initiatives by students and teachers, and with the consent of the parents, the school experienced the change to an open and democratic life on a small scale. However, there were faults and eruptions in the 1970s.

As a result of the baby boom , the school grew to over 1,000 students. More and more young teachers were hired. The space became so narrow that the auditorium with its built-in organ was used as a sports facility. The two buildings of the school were physically tight. The young people in the background perceived the Vietnam War , the Cold War and the energy crisis (oil shock and nuclear power plants ) as an existential threat . In their immediate vicinity they experienced the demolition and resettlement measures for their residential quarters because the Senate of the City of Hamburg wanted to cut a lane for a motorway feeder from the Reeperbahn to the planned Elbe tunnel. Against this backdrop, an unprecedented left radicalization took place among the students. The main protagonists of this student movement came from families with a pronounced liberal, social democratic or communist tradition. Left-wing teachers and parents reinforced the special mood. The disputes with and in the teaching staff and especially with the school management sometimes took the form of a very personal and hard-fought culture war in which Maoist and anti-authoritarian signs of violence and fashionable accessories stood for a radical rejection of the established social order. The dominant left-wing radicalism in the student body, by no means its majority, went hand in hand with a high level of motivation and great social and political commitment outside of school. The conflicts were sparked by everything that was experienced as authoritarian. The students demanded an uncensored bulletin board, uncontrolled school newspapers, freedom of smoking, general assemblies without permission. Many disputes escalated over the person of the new headmaster.

It was a difficult time for Gerhard Hahn, who was appointed headmaster in 1970 after having been a member of the college for eleven years. Many radicalized students (including some teachers and parents) sought and still see a reactionary enemy image in his correctness and in his readiness for education. At the end of his term of office, Gerhard Hahn regretted that he had not been able to hold the diverging parts of the college together. Worn down by the conflict, he was transferred to another school. In 1975, Gerhard Hahn began to break new ground in communication. Several times a year, as required, he published “information” from the school management in hectographed A4 format. Topics included personnel changes, resolutions by the school co-determination bodies, but also opinion articles such as the dangers of smoking. Now the special teaching projects, events and trips were in the foreground. Only after 2005 was this publication replaced by comparable online formats.

In 1976 the "cafeteria" opened in the basement of the upper level building. Many years later this facility became the “juice shop” in the basement of the main building.

After long preparation, own investigations and actions in the district, the Altona town hall showed a large exhibition in 1977 with lectures on the subject of "Ottensen". Under the leadership of Hans-Peter Patten, some upper school teachers brought their students together with the reality of the responsible city planners and the redevelopment officers in Altona. The school made a contribution to preventing the complete destruction of Ottensen and to design the district in such a way that it developed into one of the most popular residential areas in Hamburg.

In the 1977/78 school year, the dual qualification training CTA started, in which interested students can complete vocational training as chemical-technical assistant in addition to the Abitur. This attempt was successful; this course still exists today. Thirty years later, its importance in the city's educational offer was decisive for the construction of its own building.

School in the open society

When Gunter Kleist came to the school in 1981 and took over its management, he found a divided staff. When the new headmaster was appointed, the teachers had barely been able to communicate. The teaching staff was divided into a group of the elderly, who saw themselves as conservative reformers with a view to their considerable merits from the 1960s, and into a group of the younger ones, who saw themselves as the progressive educators. In between a few liberal personalities who did not feel they belonged to any group. Generational conflict and politics are almost inextricably linked. People had settled down in the camps and were used to the headmaster being caught between all stools. When Gunter Kleist retired after 24 years, there was no longer any trace of the old conflict. What happened? Of course, times in general had changed: the political had worn out as the crucial category of judgment. The anti-authoritarian reflex in the student body was no longer cultivated. Gradually the number of pupils fell, the school became smaller (for a few years in the nineties only two classes), more manageable, more personal. At the same time, the proportion of students with a migration background increased, enriching the school's cultural diversity, but also presenting it with new challenges.

Despite the austerity measures that began in education policy, noticeable in the reduced budget of the school, in the increased class frequency and in the extended working hours of teachers, the potential for conflict within the school decreased. Now one could always have rubbed against the concrete administrative work of a school principal. That happened too. The teachers did not give up their internal differences or their oppositional arrogance overnight. But Gunter Kleist turned out to be too clever to speak power, which he was urged to do from all sides. He decided on a case-by-case basis and did not rely on camp thinking. It was always about supporting the initiatives and projects of the individual students and teachers, for example Helga Fischer's initiative to offer Italian as a third foreign language, which not only expanded the subject program for those interested in language, but also expanded the school as a whole to many new cultural ones Impulse helped. With a lot of patience he developed a completely normal, but particularly active democratic grammar school, the most notable feature of which was not a systemic program, but rather individual and cultural diversity based on an almost ideal social mix of students. This diversity of individuals, styles of upbringing, nations and cultural currents was and is cultivated to this day. - At the same time as the new headmaster, the first computers came to the school, which Dr. Dieter Prümm and with whom he introduced the first programming language as part of a working group. An event of epoch-making importance that was hardly noticed at the time.

Installation "Monument and Counter-Monument"

The first major event of his tenure was the 100th school anniversary in 1982, which was celebrated in a big way. The focus was on dealing with the history of the school in the time of National Socialism. On the initiative of the former student and then trainee Dierk Joachim, he and his instructor, the young teacher Reinhard Dargel, had written a highly regarded article for the Festschrift, one of the first works in Hamburg that dealt so specifically with this topic (see bibliography). An exhibition with found objects from the school archive was presented on the entire ground floor and the bronze youth, who had been located in the palm house of the Jenischpark under pigeon droppings, was shown in the foyer - as part of an installation in which the advanced course art by Klaus Waschk and his Woman, the sculptor Doris Waschk-Balz , involved with a counter monument. This preoccupation with the Nazi era of my own school hit a nerve and generated a huge response among alumni, in historical research and in the press. Only after the death of the main participants and in a new generation was the history of National Socialism dealt with. The monument, which is so closely connected to the history of the school, is now in the Hamburg School Museum .

The highlight of the multi-day celebrations for the centenary was the ball in the Curio House. Kleist could and would like to celebrate. And so there were quite a few other celebrations in his own auditorium during his time, at which he was always one of the first and the last, for example a 111-year celebration as a masked ball on Rose Monday and a huge booth magic for the 120th Year olds and countless high school festivals in Bleickenallee.

The Christmas bazaar, which takes place annually on the last Friday before the 1st Advent, has developed into an institution that creates an identity that is still cultivated with inspired commitment. The first impulse came from Wolf Lüders in 1980. He used the contact with the Peruvian sports teacher Gilberto Agüero, only known as "Agu" at school, to directly support an aid project in a developing country. In the following years from 1984 to 2000 Birgit Scholing made this development aid project a matter close to her heart. With unimaginable energy she drove several times to Huari in Peru, made connections, collected and transferred funds, overcame all signs of fatigue in the college and set up a bazaar again year after year. Its peculiarity was that not only old junk was sold, but that handicrafts and production took place in the classes for sale. And with countless students, Agu literally added South American music. His folklore concerts and the many individual appearances with his band made a decisive contribution to this unique project. The co-financed facilities in Huari (a school, a girls' home and an apprenticeship program) still exist today. - In the last few years the income from the bazaar went to a development aid project in Nepal and later to other social projects, but the special atmosphere of the Christmas bazaar and its effect on the whole school community hadn't changed. The annual bazaar has even developed into the most important meeting place for alumni over the years.

Under the aegis of Kleist, the school not only developed its special passion for partying, but also for traveling. Half-yearly hiking days were a matter of course and duty, class trips could be scheduled every year, study and project trips in the upper level went abroad (from Israel to Norway, from Spain to Hungary, also to the GDR) and lasted two weeks (even a yacht sailing trip the Baltic Sea with 7 students was not really special). The school management also generously made additional short trips possible over the weekend. There were also various international meeting programs with Italian, French, Spanish, English and Scottish schools. In 1999 the whole school took a trip on several launches to Krautsand. In a nine-year high school, the time is of course different than when the Abitur has to be taken after eight years. But there was also the conviction that travel conveys particularly memorable experiences and insights and that the actual meaning of school as a person's lifetime is by no means exclusively related to teaching in the classroom.

From the rich sporting life, to which also folk dance groups (Gerd Steinbrincker designed highly regarded performances with Cossack and Gypsy dances), sailing courses and martial arts belonged, the particularly successful disciplines and their teachers, who won the Hamburg championships, must be highlighted: football (Harald Koyro ), Volleyball (Claus-Jürgen Johannsen) and badminton (Harald Koyro).

Like many other schools, the Altona high school held special project days almost every year, which took place on a current occasion (e.g. Gulf War), themed (e.g. car) or with a free choice of topics. The millennium year 2000 was determined by the project "Creation". In two years of preparation, the performance of Haydn's Creation was accompanied and supported by the Altona Singakademie in the music hall with its own performances and exhibitions of all ages, which were then presented at the German Catholic Day and on the occasion of a symposium in the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Hamburg. The school kept some exhibits for many years, such as the Indian creation myths burned in clay by Agüero and a wreath with dolls by Agnete Basedow, whose work was awarded a prize at the International Puppet Festival in Krakow. These works of art adorned the school's foyer until 2016.

The many minor and major reforms of training and examinations (in the admission requirements, in the reformed upper school, in the timetable, in the transfer regulations) that have taken place over the past forty years cannot be dealt with here. Many also had little impact on school life. One measure, however, had serious structural consequences for the school, namely the introduction of the eight-year grammar school. The first G8 Abitur was taken in Hamburg in 2010. The planning for the associated changeover to full-day operation, with lunch, etc. began accordingly beforehand. The school needed a cafeteria. In parallel with the planning of a cafeteria, preparations for a complete renovation of the chemistry laboratories took place. The authorities were persuaded to combine both projects in a new building on the school garden in Bülowstrasse. Joachim Reimer, in whose hands u. a. the management of the CTA training and the property management were in charge of this project in close coordination with the architects Möller und Seiffert, so that the school got a third building for the 2007 anniversary, the very representative "House of Chemistry" with a cafeteria for everyone. Since then, the Altona high school has been a school at three locations.

The many events and projects in these years were only possible thanks to the tireless help of the caretaker couple Jens and Geli Baumhöfner. They were in love with success and made school the place of their lives. He even played in a band with high school students for many years. She was the force that kept the cafeteria and juice shop going in the background. They came a few years after G. Kleist and followed him a short time. Her connection with the school can be gauged a little when one knows that a student who was very close to the school was surprised at the caretaker's departure from the official apartment, thinking that the school was his personal property.

School looking for new ways

When Georg Kerl took over the management of the school in 2005, he met a very diverse, lively, initiative-rich company whose student numbers were already rising slightly again in the general trend. From the beginning, the development of teaching methods was important to him, which was generally considered to be the answer to the PISA shock at this time: the individual learning process. The college supported this orientation by, for example, offering a “glass school” as part of the 125th school anniversary in 2007. Parents, neighbors, journalists and educationalists at the University of Hamburg were offered a whole day of classes, on which the guests from outside could sit in if they wished and in the afternoon could discuss what they had experienced in the auditorium. Georg Kerl mobilized the strengths of the school and concentrated them on the development of individual learning, which at the same time should be socially and cooperatively designed. His committed presentation of this school program to the outside world was well received by interested parents in the surrounding districts. With many measures he tightened the organizational processes and modernized the reputation of the school. For example, a school curriculum was developed. The new data-based examinations and tests (educational monitoring) were included in a publicly effective manner. The report of the first school inspection carried out on behalf of the school authorities came to a very positive result. His systemic leadership style and the additional efforts he demanded of the teaching staff, however, did not remain without conflicts in the school community. The programmatic reorientation, the rejuvenation of the teaching staff and the parents' desire for urbanity ended a certain urge to go west to the supposedly better schools and led to a growing acceptance of the Altona grammar school far beyond the neighborhood. At the end of Georg Kerl's service, it had developed into one of the most popular schools in the entire school district, based on the number of registration requests.

In connection with the special projects since the beginning of the 2000s, a few should be mentioned that have enriched cultural school life in the long term. On the one hand, there is the rebuilding of a school orchestra, which was formed in the sixties, by Julia Saucke, who has been able to set up a very respectable big band orchestra in a relatively short time since 2010. In addition, there has been a “literary tea” since 2003, which Veronika Pilscheur and her parents have developed into a permanent establishment over the years with performances and readings by well-known authors (including David Chotjewitz , Jens Huckeriede with his Tüdelband project, Dirk Kurbjuweit , Claudia Kühn ) - also regularly in the Altonale program . The literary tea has developed a life so rich in cultural highlights that its story would have to be told in its own place. - These two institutions and the guarantees later issued by the school management for the subjects French and Latin as second foreign languages ​​with equal rights alongside Spanish made it easier for the educated parents in Ottensen to enroll their children at the Altona grammar school.

The school company FairChoc, founded in 2003, developed into a very special thing. It was not a new idea for students to set up commercially oriented companies as part of schools. But giving such an entrepreneurial project a social direction is in a certain way typical of the milieu at the Altona high school. Inspired and guided by Jürgen Reisner from the church “Arbeitsstelle Weitblick” in Ottensen, where the student Ibrahim Özdemir did an internship, he and his friends founded a student company with the aim of promoting the idea of ​​fair trade. The young entrepreneurs were trained as speakers and paid for their lectures, which could be booked by interested classes, associations and other schools. This project was very well received by the students, found more and more participants over the years and was supported by the school management from the beginning. With the market launch of its own chocolate bar and especially in connection with a trip by the student company accompanied by the young teacher Jan Raddatz in 2009 to the place of origin of their chocolate, namely to their partners in the Dominican Republic, this company received a great boost and an unmistakable response in the public.

Because of the growing need for high school places in the district, politics and administration even thought about expanding the Altonas high school into a six-class school for a while. In the political voting processes in which the school was involved, however, this plan could not prevail. Instead, a third grammar school was opened in Altona. The school will therefore be preserved from the enormous building volume that would have resulted on the Hohenzollernring.

Stefan Grübel, the new head of office began after Georg Kerl's retirement in 2014 during the time of the above. Plans, of which the repeatedly postponed renovation of the two buildings on Bleickenallee and Hohenzollernring and an extension on Bülowstraße remained. The “House of Chemistry” becomes a “House of Natural Sciences”. From 2014 to 2016, all other members of the school management also changed.

Well-known students and teachers

literature

  • Otto Roll: The history of the upper secondary school in Altona-Ottensen. Festschrift 50 years. Self-published, Hamburg 1932.
  • Georg Wilhelm Rost: The history of our school from its recognition as a Realschule i. E. to the present. Festschrift 50 years. Self-published, Hamburg 1932.
  • Wilhelm Hübener: On the history of the school over the past 25 years. Festschrift 75 years. Self-published, Hamburg 1957.
  • Hans-Peter Jorzick: Altona High School - our school in transition. Festschrift 100 years. Self-published, Hamburg 1982.
  • Gerhard Hahn: Altona high school, reform school 1970–1980. Festschrift 100 years. Self-published, Hamburg 1982.
  • Reinhard Dargel, Joachim Dierk: "Germany has to live, and if we have to die!" - On the history of the upper secondary school for boys in Altona under fascism. 100 years anniversary. Self-published, Hamburg 1982.
  • Reinhard Dargel and others: The wild 70s at the Altona high school. Protocols of interviews with alumni. Hamburg 2007.
  • Uwe Schmidt: Meyer, Peter . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 240-241 .
  • Hans-Peter Lorent: Perpetrator Profiles, Volume 1. State Center for Political Education, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-929728-92-7 .

Web links

Commons : Gymnasium Altona  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b CTA training CTA training on the school's website. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  2. ^ Architectural monument High School Altona Description on the Altona District Office page. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  3. a b c d School history History of the school on the school website. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  4. The upper level description on the school website. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  5. A giant check for Basis & Woge.eV Article by Dorothea Grusnick from February 1, 2017 on the school's website. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  6. International school projects Erasmus + on the school website. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  7. Erasmus + - The program at a glance Program overview on the official website. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  8. Mobile learning: Start of the next generation Project description on the part of the authority for schools and vocational training. Retrieved February 15, 2018.
  9. Laptop WLAN pilot project has started. Press release of the school authorities dated December 2, 2014. Accessed on February 15, 2018.
  10. Professional orientation Description of the professional orientation concept on the school website. Retrieved February 15, 2018.