Rector's School Hilden
The Hilden Rector's School was a higher, private educational establishment for boys with an attached boarding school and its own observatory in Hilden . The brick house, built in the Empire style at the turn of the century, still stands today at Kolpingstrasse 9-11. It is registered under monument number 22 in the list of architectural monuments in Hilden .
history
Municipal high school for boys
During the tenure of Mayor Joseph Johann Pabst (1865–1877), the school system in Hilden was expanded. On March 7, 1870, the Hilden city council decided to build a municipal college for boys (rectorate school). The approval of the royal government was given on May 25, 1870. The school opened with two classes in July 1870, initially in two rented rooms at Mittelstrasse 33 (later on the first floor in the “Ratskeller”, today the Hunkemöller fashion store is located there) for 40–50 students. Hilden then had 6,100 inhabitants.
The first head of the school was Rector Karl Heller from Viersen (1870–1873), who was assisted by the teacher Richard Wagner. Heller received an annual salary of 650 thaler, Wagner 400 thaler. On May 1, 1875, Kretzschmar (1873–1876), who had meanwhile become headmaster, the school was able to move into a newly constructed building at 13 Heiligenstrasse. Buses (1876–1877) and Gottlieb Schneider (1877–1896) followed Kretzschmar as headmasters. Under Schneider, the number of pupils fell so sharply in the 1880s that the teachers Robert Friedel (* around 1855; † September 26, 1894) and Hermann Zimmermann (* October 11, 1852; † May 31, 1921) were given other uses.
In 1896 the school, which in the end only had three students, was no longer financially viable. The school was closed, Rector Carl Gottlieb Schneider († July 7, 1898) retired together with the Werl- born teacher Christian Rehbein. After expanding the school building on Heiligenstrasse with two classrooms and a teacher's apartment, the Catholic girls' school, which had been created by splitting up the previous simultaneous school , moved into it.
Rector's School Schneider
Rector Gottlieb Schneider wanted to found and set up a private school for himself with a boarding school for high school students from abroad. He had a school building rebuilt in three construction phases in Gasstrasse opposite the gas boiler and the coking plant (since 1949 Kolpingstrasse 9-11). The first construction phase began in 1865. In May 1875, the private school relocated to the simple brick building.
Shortly after the completion of the third phase of the representative building, Gottlieb Schneider died in 1898. His widow, Anna Schneider, b. Bornemann (* around 1852; † June 5, 1932) continued the school and the pension until 1902. She engaged teaching staff and hired the rectors Granen, Koch and, in 1899, the rector Wilhelm Sostmann (born August 18, 1868 in Kassel ; † September 12, 1938 in Bad Godesberg ). The number of students rose to 100. Under Sostmann, the theology candidate Heinrich Friedrich Röttger came to Hilden on May 2, 1900. He taught as a teacher at the "Rector's School Schneider". At that time Hilden had 10,500 inhabitants.
Rector's school and boarding school Röttger
Rector's School Friedrich Röttger
On April 17, 1902, Anna Schneider sold the building on Gasstrasse to Friedrich Röttger (born February 18, 1874 in Lengerich ; † May 20, 1962 in Hilden). Rector Friedrich Röttger set up a rectorate school. The pedagogue from Lengerich in Westphalia provided the originally Prussian sober brick building with porches, an entrance portal with white ornaments, columns and capitals and gave it its present-day appearance. As imposing as the brick building looks from the outside, it was splendidly furnished on the inside: stucco ceilings, stucco panes, state-of-the-art technical equipment for the turn of the century, filigree woodwork, glass paintings and more ensured a pleasant atmosphere for teachers, students and staff.
Friedrich Röttger married his first wife Clara born on August 23, 1902. Schmidt (born January 12, 1875 in Düren , † January 27, 1927).
From September 5, 1902, the institution was connected to the boarding school. A park ( part of the former crown garden ) and a tennis court belonged to the boarding house . Mrs. Röttger ran the pension.
The school's motto was “The more knowledge the better”. The students were able to learn physics with large-scale experiments in the school's exceptionally well-equipped laboratory. The pupils were able to experience the subject of astronomy in the school's own observatory in a practical way.
The school had a good reputation. The boys' school and boarding school were under the auspices of strict Prussian education . Up to 100 boys populated the school. Her parents were wealthy academics and industrialists or ambassadors from Hilden, the surrounding area and other European countries such as the Netherlands and France . There was also a student from Cuba among them. The founder of Peking University went through the Röttger School.
The "Röttger Rectorate School" had a drum and pipe corps and its own school flag. The school went on until the Obertertia (= year 9) . Between 1910 and 1914, the boarding school had 50 to 60 students. Around 1930 the boarding school looked after 42 students.
The focus of the educational concept was individual support. The class teacher principle applied , with each teacher assigning several subjects. The school days lasted until the afternoon. There was no homework. The school issued “miniature certificates ” every six weeks so that parents could get an overview of their children's school material and achievements .
The “Pirate Bay” introduced by Friedrich Röttger had a legendary reputation all along. Right next to the bedroom of the Röttgers lived or lived in the multi-bed room the particularly rabid boobies . A very stormy bully is said to have "sat" here for five years.
On April 13, 1910, the municipal secondary school opened in Hilden . On January 27, 1915, it moved to the new building at Gerresheimer Strasse 20. Even under the new Hilden school conditions, the private school still had 50 to 60 students. When the municipal high school, which later became the Helmholtz Gymnasium, had developed so far, the private upper-tertians were able to move on to the lower-tertiary (= year 8) and also do the Abitur here.
Time of the First World War
Friedrich Röttger was drafted during the First World War . His wife, who also comes from the school subject, mastered school over the difficult period. During this time the foreign students stayed away. Only after the war did foreign boarding school students return. With their good currency, the inflation losses could be compensated to some extent.
Period of National Socialism and the early post-war period
In the Third Reich , an order in 1937 stipulated that private schools were no longer allowed to accept new students. Rector Röttger had to dismantle the classes. In 1942 the last class was retired. During the further period of National Socialism , the school was closed. During this time it served as a DRK rescue center.
Immediately after the end of the war, the building was confiscated by the British occupying forces and refugee families and those who had been bombed out were quartered in the building.
From 1946 the city also used the building for vocational school purposes .
Boarding school Helmut Röttger
Helmut Röttger (born May 29 1903 in Hilden), son of Friedrich Röttger was also teacher . He taught first in Ratingen and then at the Helmholtz Gymnasium . After the death of his first wife in 1927, Friedrich Röttger married his second wife Else Anna nee on May 19, 1928 in Hilden. Stoltz (* 1852 in Ruhrort ).
Friedrich Röttger and Helmut Röttger together converted the building into a boarding school in 1947. After the death of Friedrich Röttger, Helmut Röttger gave up his job as a teacher and in 1962 took over the overall management of the "Pensionats Röttger".
Over time, the number of boarders rose to 55. There were no longer any lessons in the building. The students attended the Helmholtz grammar school in Hilden or other secondary schools. Helmut Röttger was married to Elisabeth, born Philips (born February 17, 1908 in Marburg an der Lahn ). Together with her husband, she looked after the guests. On September 11, 1978, the "Röttger boys' boarding school" was also closed. In the end, 37 boys were still living in the boarding school. The Röttger family withdrew.
Observatory and weather station
Friedrich Röttger was not only an educator, educator and headmaster. In 1908 he had a turret with an observatory built on the roof of the 15 m high boys' school . The roof is in the shape of a fairly flat four-sided pyramid. The dome of the attic, three meters in diameter, had a split flap 60 cm wide. It could be moved sideways. An equatorial refractor with an opening of five inches by Reinfelder and Hertel (R&H based in Munich near Pasing) formed the main instrument of the lens telescope until World War I , which was aimed at the starry night sky over Hilden.
Because movements in the school building disrupted observation, Röttger planned an observatory in the garden. But only after the First World War could he inaugurate it on August 8, 1920. The building is still in the garden at the corner of Heiligenstrasse and Kolpingstrasse. An approximately 80 cm high brick plinth rises on a circular concrete foundation with a diameter of 5 m. The beam structure of the 15-sided observation room rests on this wall. The end of the substructure was formed by a wooden wreath cut in the shape of a circular ring. In order to be able to observe it free of vibrations, it was mounted on railroad tracks. He carried the track and the ring gear to move the dome. The dome itself, which was a hemisphere with a diameter of 50 cm and a diameter of 50 cm, consisted of a solid frame of ribbon and angle iron, which was covered with overlapping, galvanized sheet iron plates to make it rainproof. The entire construction reached a total height of six meters. The gap flaps were constructed in halves around large stomata, which can be moved to the left and right with a handwheel. The gap in the dome could be opened beyond the zenith.
The new telescope with an aperture of 190 millimeters and a focal length of 3.07 meters came from the Gustav Heyde company in Dresden and cost 21,000 Reichsmarks . In addition, there were smaller instruments such as handheld or prismatic telescopes , aids for photographic documentation of the starry sky. The twenty eyepieces and the lenses for the lens telescope, which Friedrich Röttger and co-workers had painstakingly handcrafted, were kept there.
There was also a telescope from Merz with a 97 mm aperture and 870 mm focal length with excellent light intensity and a large field of view.
The clock system consisted of three precision pendulum clocks. One of the clocks was corrected for sidereal time and was connected to a chronograph that recorded every second of the clock as well as every point in time given by a button. The master clock with a nickel steel compensation pendulum from Straßer and Rohde in Glashütte was controlled with the help of the time signal transmitters from Nauen and Paris and showed a very satisfactory rate.
The observatory was also a weather station with a thermometer and barometer . The sundial on the outbuilding still reminds of these activities.
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Friedrich Röttger received the weather service badge in February 1957 for managing the weather service for 50 years .
Not to forget a well-stocked library with the most important astronomical magazines and sky maps.
The observatory was available to the adult education center and the natural science associations for events and observation evenings.
After the turning point caused by the Second World War , hand-cut reflectors were added. The collection was expanded in 1950 with a reflecting telescope . It had an aperture of 21 centimeters (8 inches) and a focal length of 1.80 meters. Röttger designed and built this precision instrument himself, together with Ernst Kreut from Hilden.
At the old age of 84, Röttger donated this reflector telescope to the Lengerich secondary school, where he himself was taught. On May 9th, 1960 Lengerich city director Artur Anders inaugurated the school and public observatory.
The garden observatory is still standing. Even his telescope is still there.
professional school
From 1952 to 1961, the vocational school of the Düsseldorf-Mettmann district taught in the building on Kolpingstrasse. In May 1952, Erwin Schmidt, a graduate commercial teacher, was elected Hilden's vocational school director. After the completion of the new vocational school "Am Holterhöfchen ", she moved there in September 1961.
Bergisches Internat
At the beginning of 1980 the conversion and the new use into the "Bergische Internat" took place. Boarding and teaching operations started on May 25, 1980. From 1980 to 1982, under the headmasters Peter von den Driesch and Beate Reichenbächer, it was the second boarding school of the "Bergische Boarding School (Gut Falkenberg) in Hochdahl". For the first time it was open to boys and girls. The polytechnic training program in Hilden also promoted photography as a compulsory subject. Of the 100 children and young people who were taught, twelve lived in the boarding school. The ten teachers led the children to graduate from secondary school and secondary school. You couldn't take your Abitur there.
Private school Klaus Grochla
In May 1986 the school was given the new school authority, Klaus Grochla. Ingrid Wacke became the headmistress. The “Klaus Grochla Private School” visited 70 pupils. The motto of the project week in 1988 was: “Learning doesn't have to stop with the school gong. Learning does not always have to be "encouraged" by grades. The school held an annual “Open Day”.
Refugee and asylum seekers' home
The renewed educational use ended after just three years. From September 14, 1989 until the end of the 1990s, the building was used as an urban transition home for repatriates and ethnic German repatriates and asylum seekers . After that it was completely down to earth.
Renovation and new use
The Hilden interior designer Klaus Röttger (born September 12, 1941; † 2013), grandson of Friedrich Röttger, restored the former school building with a substantial sum. The old building fabric of the “gem” in the middle of the city was not touched, stucco and jewelry are lovingly spruced up down to the last detail, and the modern technology of the 21st century ensures well-being, but is not visible. Since 2002, Kolpingstrasse 9 has been home to a cosmetic institute with foot care, child and adolescent psychotherapy and a neuropsychological specialist service. An architecture office is planning on the ground floor at Kolpingstrasse 11 and a law firm advises on the first floor.
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 9 ′ 42 ″ N , 6 ° 56 ′ 19 ″ E
credentials
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Heinrich Strangmeier : Hildener Fortbildungsschulprobleme im 19. Jahrhundert , In: Contributions to Niederbergischen school history , part II, Niederbergische contributions , vol. 19, A. Henn Verlag, Wuppertal 1969, p. 25
- ↑ Wolfgang Wennig: Hilden yesterday and today , Hilden City Archives, 1977, p. 70
- ^ Heinrich Strangmeier: Hildener Fortbildungsschulprobleme im 19. Jahrhundert , In: Contributions to Niederbergischen school history , part II, Niederbergische contributions , Vol. 19, A. Henn Verlag, Wuppertal 1969, p. 28
- ^ Heinrich Strangmeier: Hildener Fortbildungsschulprobleme im 19. Jahrhundert , In: Contributions to Niederbergischen school history , part II, Niederbergische contributions , vol. 19, A. Henn Verlag, Wuppertal 1969, p. 45
- ^ Heinrich Strangmeier: The school chronicle of the Hilden main teacher Anton Schneider , In: Contributions to Niederbergischen school history , part I, Niederbergische contributions , vol. 17, A. Henn Verlag, Wuppertal 1969, p. 80
- ↑ a b c d A life in the service of the youth, Rector Röttger for 50 years in a higher private boys' school , Hildener Zeitung, May 5, 1950, No. 104
- ↑ a b c Susanne Hennig: Pirate Bay for the Angels , Rheinische Post, May 25, 1985
- ^ Private school Kolpingstrasse 9-11 , list of sources no. 3044 of the Hilden City Archives
- ^ Herbert Büren: School has existed for 75 years , Rheinische Post, September 5, 1977
- ↑ Werner Kimmel: Boys' boarding school as part of Hilden history , Hildener Wochenanzeiger 256/7, November 27, 2002
- ↑ Reinfelder & Hertel
- ^ Gustav Heyde Dresden Telescope approx. 1896–1912
- ↑ Weather service badge
- ↑ Alexander Carle: When the stars were reached in Hilden , Hildener Stadtmagazin, autumn 2018
- ↑ Friedrich Röttger: The Hilden private observatory , In: Hildener Heimatblätter , year 1952, pages 83-86
- ↑ The sky moves closer to Lengerich ; Tecklenburger Landbote, May 18, 1960
- ^ Vocational college Hilden, Our school history
- ↑ Jörg Leckenbusch: New school authority, new head of office, significant changes to the "Bergisches Internat" , Rheinische Post, May 8, 1986, No. 106
- ↑ Antonio Demitri: New atmosphere first project week at the private school Grochla ; Rheinische Post, May 9, 1988, No. 108
- ^ Anja Schmidt-Mende: Rohrstock danced on the back , Rheinische Post, October 12, 2002