Lodz German Gymnasium
| Lodz German Gymnasium | |
|---|---|
| type of school | high school |
| founding | 1906 |
| closure | 1943 |
| place | Lodz |
| Country | Poland |
| Coordinates | 51 ° 45 '44 " N , 19 ° 27' 16" E |
The Lodzer Deutsche Gymnasium (LDG) was a high school in Lodz . It was founded in 1906 in what was then the Russian part of Poland to give German children the opportunity to cultivate their culture and, above all, their language.
history
The beginning until 1914
At a meeting of the German school community in Lodz in 1906, Heinrich Johannson said : “The work of the people takes place in three directions: in intellectual and cultural, in economic and in political terms. ... As Germans, we have to found a party whose task must be to secure sufficient numbers of German schools in addition to the right to political participation ”(“ Neue Lodzer Zeitung ”September 18, 1936, here after“ Under one roof ”). The party was supposed to be the German Constitutional Liberal Party , which was founded on October 17, 1906 and which provided the funds for the German school association and the school's board of trustees. Braun and Johannson then announced in the German press in Łódź: Our German youth should be prepared for life through peaceful, unrelenting work and, while preserving their individuality, without the people they should not be able to be useful citizens of a country, if they should have a loving understanding for the others Gaining nationalities with whom she will have to work together in the future. (after "Under one roof"). The first eleven teachers included u. a. Pastor or vicar Gustaw Manitius , Waldemar Kroenberg , Friedrich Lehr and Hermann Günther and Heinrich Johannson as director.
In order to secure the financing of the grammar school, a committee was formed, which could then undertake the ceremonial inauguration of the grammar school on November 29, 1906. The school was located in rented premises on Pańska Street and when it opened it had 58 students in four classes.
On September 6, 1908, the high school association took over the high school, which was attended by 154 students in the 1908/09 school year. The association began to collect money from members of the German school association and from industrialists from Lodz in order to be able to build its own school building. The foundation stone was laid in August 1909. The school building was inaugurated on September 15, 1910. Ernst Leonhardt said:
“Teach, educate and raise our children in the true German spirit to be good people, who remain true to their people, true to their faith and true to their fatherland as good citizens. Plant in the hearts of youth the seeds of Tolerance and Forbearance, that our children may become people who are strict with themselves and indulgent towards others. "
In December of that year, lessons for 349 pupils could begin in the building erected by Nestler & Ferrenbach .
The new director was Hofrat Hugo von Eltz since September 15, 1910 , since Johannsen had left Lodz to take over the management of a school in Libau . In 1913/1914 481 students attended the school, which was attended by the Russian Minister of Education Kasso in November 1913 . In June 1914, the first ten students received their Abitur in a big celebration.
World War I and Republic of Poland
With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the building was used by the Russians and later the Germans as a military hospital, and lessons were only given by individual teachers in private apartments. The German occupiers released the building for school operations in the summer of 1915, and classes began again. The Foreign Office in Berlin was interested in the school and therefore gave it considerable funds. In the school year 1918/19 the director of Eltz was replaced by the former teacher Dr. Alfred Wolf replaced. In April 1921 Felix von Ingersleben became director after Wolf went to the USA . The school's annual budget between the two world wars was around 800,000 zlotys. One pupil had to pay 600 złoty, or higher grade pupils 800 złoty tuition. Good pupils could receive a reduction or even complete waiver of school fees.
At a school Olympiad in 1921, the high school reached first place. From 1924/1925 the number of pupils steadily decreased and in 1925 leaflets appeared from the German Reich proclaiming anti-Semitic slogans. Who distributed this was not clarified, the school itself was not anti-Semitic.
In 1927, a reform was carried out in Poland, which restricted the German Board of Trustees' freedom of choice for appointing directors or teachers. Unlike in the past, this was now subject to approval by the school administration of the voivodship. Immediately after this decision, the teachers Herrmann Günther and Herrmann Thiem had to leave the school.
In 1928/29, von Ingersleben was replaced by Edmund Erdmann due to differences of opinion with the board of trustees of the grammar school association. Von Ingersleben died in August 1929 and was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Łódź. Only a year later, the engineer Bruno Guthke became director, which he was to remain until 1933. The economic crisis of 1928 exacerbated the decline in the number of students. At the same time, the Poles increasingly demanded Polish language lessons, since the ethnically German Poles spoke Polish too poorly, and they managed to increase the number of Polish teachers. The director introduced Polish Days when the students should speak only Polish. However, these instructions were largely ignored and eventually discontinued. Furthermore, in 1928, the Łódź school board of trustees revoked their teaching permits from six German teachers, whereupon numerous certificates of good relations between the teachers and ethnic Poles, including from the Widzew municipal office, from industrialists in the city and also from the teaching staff of the school, who also considered ethnic Poles Teachers had been submitted.
In 1930, on the 400th birthday of the Polish poet Jan Kochanowski , a celebration was held, poems recited and Kochanowski's tragedy The Dispatch of the Greek Envoys was performed.
In 1931 the teachers of the school were accused in the press, first in the "Deutscher Volksbote", of receiving money from the German Reich and thus acting to the detriment of the Polish state. The director's complaint against Jan Danielewski , the publisher of the Volksbote, for defamation was dismissed on December 2, 1931, because such defamations had already taken place earlier and no one had taken action against it. As a result of the process, five German teachers were fired. On April 9, 1933, some Catholic and Jewish Poles demolished the school. The police arrived on site about an hour after the crime. The Polish public apologized for the incident, but at the same time the ethnic Germans were accused of having provoked such an act through their behavior. For the following school year the school was placed under ethnic Polish management and the new director was for the first time a Pole, Franciszek Michejda . After Michejda's resignation in 1937, Władysław Gluchowski became director, who quickly became popular with both teachers and students. He ran the school in the spirit of state politics , but tried to prevent nationalist influences from affecting the school. In the school year 1937/38 the attacks on ethnic German students increased, not least because of the events in the Third Reich and the annexation of the Sudetenland , which heightened tensions. To protect the school, police patrolled the school building.
End of school
In 1939 the school year was to start on September 1st. The school year turned out to be difficult with the start of the attack on Poland from the Third Reich . On September 9th the Wehrmacht entered the city. In December, the grammar school was renamed State High School for Boys and under the direction of Senior Studies Director Dr. Martin Petran posed. Due to his suggestion, the school was renamed General-von-Briesen -Schule, Staatliche Oberschule for boys at the end of 1940 . (The information handed down in the literature that the name was renamed as early as January 1940 is incorrect, as Dr. Petran only asked the general for his consent in November 1940 and received it immediately.) Religious instruction was also abolished during this time and the Russian and Polish literature removed from the library and destroyed. The last proper school leaving examination was held at Easter 1943. With the approaching eastern front, the school building was occupied by the Wehrmacht and converted into a front control center. The school was moved to the Günther Prien School . The pupils were later transferred to a children's country deportation camp in Lustenau Castle near Deutscheneck ( Sompolno ) in the district of Warthbrücken . With the evacuation of the Germans from Litzmannstadt , the camp was also dissolved, and the teachers and students dispersed in Germany while fleeing.
In 1956, former high school students met in the Wachenburg near Weinheim to celebrate the founding of the high school 50 years ago. A second meeting took place in Kassel ten years later, to which over 1,000 guests came.
Further use of the building
After the war, the building was initially used by Polish schools ( Gimnazjum and Liceum ); In 1970 the University of Łódź took over the building for its Philological Faculty. The student strikes there during the nationwide riots in 1981 became known. After the philological faculty was also relocated to the new campus in 2014 , the building, which is now a listed building, stood empty for a few months until it was sold to the Lodz Court of Appeal on October 12, 2014 has been. It is now to be renovated and adapted to the new use; a purchase by the court is expected for 2016.
number of students
1917/18 - 711 boys
1922/23 - 852 boys
1941/42 - 775 boys
School directors
- 1906–1910 Heinrich Johannsen
- 1910–1918 Hugo von Eltz
- 1918–1921 Dr. Alfred Wolf
- 1921–1928 Felix von Ingersleben
- 1928–1929 Dr. Edmund Erdmann
- 1929–1933 Bruno Guthke
- 1933–1937 Michejda Franciszek
- 1937–1939 Władysław Gluchowski
- 1939–1942 Dr. Martin Petran
- 1942–1945 Dr. Rudolf Bückmann
Known students
- Theodor Bierschenk , master's degree, teacher, publicist and leader of the expellees
- Heinrich Boltz , SS-Obersturmführer and head of the Volksdeutsche in the Generalgouvernement
- Georg Geilke , Eastern law researcher
- Harry Hahn , chemist and university professor
- Kurt G. Hausmann
- Karl Hemfler , lawyer, administrative officer and politician (SPD)
- Harry Jakobi
- Eugen Oskar Kossmann , diplomat and Eastern researcher
- Friedrich Kunitzer , painter, graphic artist and writer
- Peter Nasarski , journalist
- Ludwig Wolff (SS member)
literature
- Fritz Weigelt (Ed.): Penne, Pauker und Pennäler: A memorial for the German high schools in Lodz 1866-1945 . Weichsel-Warthe-Schriften Nr. 15, self-published by the Kuratorium for the LDG, Wuppertal 1972
- Krystyna Radziszewska (ed.), Krzysztof Woźniak: Under One Roof - The Germans and their Polish and Jewish Neighbors in Lodz in the 19th and 20th Centuries / Pod jednym dachem - Niemcy oraz ich polscy i żydowscy sąsiedzi w Łodzi w XIX i XX wieku . Łódź 2000, ISBN 83-88484-08-7 , pp. 114–126, pp. 18–27
Individual evidence
- ^ After Fritz Weigelt: Poland and the Łódź high school . 1972 in: Penne, Pauker und Pennäler
- ↑ File inventory “State General von Briesen School in Litzmannstadt (Łódź)”, Posen State Archives (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu), call number 53/299/0 / 3.3 / 2469, scan no. 138 ff. Accessed on May 1, 2016 .
- ↑ The Philology Building on Kościuszko Street sold. October 12, 2014, accessed October 1, 2015 (Polish).
- ↑ Fritz Weigelt (Ed.): Penne, Pauker and Pennäler , p. 38
- ↑ Fritz Weigelt (Ed.): Penne, Pauker and Pennäler , p. 43
- ↑ Fritz Weigelt (Ed.): Penne, Pauker and Pennäler , p. 56
- ↑ Fritz Weigelt (Ed.): Penne, Pauker and Pennäler , p. 93