St. Ursula High School (Aachen)

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St. Ursula Aachen
St.Ursula Gymnasium Aachen.jpg
type of school high school
founding 1891
address

Bergdriesch 32–36
52062 Aachen, Germany

place Aachen
country North Rhine-Westphalia
Country Germany
Coordinates 50 ° 46 '48 "  N , 6 ° 5' 2"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 46 '48 "  N , 6 ° 5' 2"  E
carrier Free carrier
student about 600
Teachers about 55
management Patrick Biemans
Website School homepage

The St. Ursula Gymnasium in Aachen is a modern language high school for girls with a full day . The school was taken over by the Ursulines from the Kalvarienberg monastery in Ahrweiler in 1891 as the former municipal high school for girls and expanded into a monastery school and secondary school in the following years . St. Ursula has been an independent sponsor of the St. Ursula School Foundation since 2014 . At the beginning of the school year 2021/2022, the Ursulinengymnasium will be the last school in Aachen to introduce co-education for economic reasons , while maintaining a mono- educational focus in the form of a “girls class”.

history

Ursuline monastery and school around 1900

Since the 17th century, the Ursulines have played an important role in the Catholic upbringing and education of young girls in Aachen, with several interruptions. In this context they had to give up their former Ursuline Convent in Aachen in 1802 due to the secularization of the monastery by the French and were expelled from the St. Leonhard Higher School for Daughters to Belgium in 1878 as a result of the culture war , which they had been in charge of since 1848. Finally, in 1891, they returned to Aachen and took over the management of the municipal higher girls' school on Bergdriesch, initially with 37 students. Here they set up their “New Monastery” in a building in need of renovation and gradually converted the school into a secondary school with a Sunday school for the factory girls. For this purpose, the first classes were set up from 1905, in which the pupils could prepare for the Abitur in what was currently the only Catholic girls' school in Germany. Initially, however, this had to be completed in other municipal high schools or in other cities such as Krefeld and was only allowed to be held in-house from 1918 with official Prussian approval.

A decisive turning point in everyday school life took place during the Nazi era and during the Second World War . In 1939 the sisters were expelled from school service and the school building was confiscated by the state and offered for sale. The sisters were admitted to the Aloysiusstift in Weyhestrasse and the pupils were divided between several schools and mainly housed in the Viktoriaschule Aachen .

After the war, the order got the badly damaged school and monastery buildings back on Bergdriesch and the sisters were able to start rebuilding the complex and reopen the school as a lyceum in autumn 1946. Finally, in 1950, St. Ursula was recognized as a modern language grammar school.

Grave site in the Ostfriedhof

Due to a lack of pedagogically trained religious sisters, the Ursuline Congregation Ahrweiler, which operated four other schools, transferred the school management of St. Ursula Aachen to a secular director for the first time in 2003 and the sponsorship of the grammar school to their own monastery "St. Ursula School Foundation" .

Both the Ursulines from Ahrweiler, who worked in the St. Leonhard Gymnasium and in the St. Ursula Gymnasium, found their final resting place in Aachen's Ostfriedhof .

School profile

School life is based on the Christian image of man in the tradition of the order's founder Angela Merici , but is not tied to a denomination. Across denominations, daily prayer and regular church services, but also days of reflection and trips to Taizé, play an important role in this context . As a bound and homework-free all-day school, St. Ursula prefers the “3 + 2 teaching system”, which means that lessons are only held on three days in the afternoons. As part of its focus on modern languages, English, French and Spanish are modern foreign languages ​​and Latin is the only ancient language on the curriculum. Linguistic depression are available as replacement schools, the Lycee Jean XXIII in Reims which Ursuline Academy in Cincinnati / Ohio, the Yong Jiang Vocational School in Ningbo / China, the Colegio San Ramón y San Antonio in Madrid and the Colegio Santa Ursula in Santiago de Chile to Available. In addition, the St. Ursula has been offering joint advanced courses in cooperation with the cooperating schools Pius-Gymnasium and Rhein-Maas-Gymnasium Aachen since 2018.

As a girls' school, St. Ursula is particularly committed to educating the students as self-confident personalities and organizes, for example, in cooperation with the police, courses in self-assertion and moral courage as well as prevention courses for dangers on the Internet as well as education about women's issues and eating disorders in cooperation with doctors. In addition, the pupils are offered special life and career counseling as well as individual support options, for which the high school has been awarded the “Seal of Approval for Individual Support” from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Another focus of the school profile is sporting activities in various disciplines. In 2014, the school with its specialization in volleyball was chosen as a “partner school of volleyball”. Within the framework of school and extracurricular cultural offers, the school focuses on the artistic expression of the pupils. With the City Music School Aachen or GRETA, the department for children and youth theater of the Grenzlandtheater Aachen , cooperation partners are available for musical or acting projects.

Personalities

literature

Web links

Commons : Ursula-Gymnasium Aachen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Margot Gasper: Foundation secures the future of St. Ursula , in: Aachener Nachrichten of January 24, 2014
  2. ^ Coeducation St. Ursula Aachen , message from the school management
  3. ↑ Hedwig Spies: Courageous nuns paved the way for the girls' Abitur , in: Grenz-Echo from May 8, 1998
  4. ^ Ingeborg Schild , Elisabeth Janssen: The Aachen East Cemetery. Mayersche Buchhandlung , Aachen 1991, pp. 230-232, ISBN 3-87519-116-1 .
  5. ↑ Beate Müller: St. Ursula now has a secular leader for the first time in: Aachener Nachrichten of September 26, 2003
  6. ^ School foundation St. Ursula Aachen founded , press release on the pages of the Ursulinen Calvarienberg