Book.The Burghardt Gymnasium Buchen is celebrating its 175th anniversary in 2020: the school was officially opened in November 1845. The planned anniversary events cannot take place in view of the current circumstances. Instead, the milestones in school history are to be highlighted in a series of articles that appear at irregular intervals.
The first milestone takes us back to another time: industrialization, which is also picking up speed in Germany, changed the economy and society in the middle of the 19th century. Under the conditions of the policy of restoration, new political demands and alternative political ideas emerged, which were finally postulated and fought out in the revolution of 1848. The small town of Buchen in the Odenwald also has to react to changes in living conditions and the demands of the new era.
“The higher school in Buchen was opened on November 10th last year […] solemnly opened. The establishment of this school was a deeply felt need for the local city and the surrounding area, caused by the circumstances of the times. ”The introductory words of the first annual report of the Grand Ducal Higher Civic School in Buchen from 1846 make it clear that the foundation of the school was literally a“ current event “Is to be understood.
Industrialization meant an epochal change: The new techniques of the factory age also put the Buchen craftsmen under pressure. The change in living conditions also gave rise to a new need for middle-class education in Buchen. The proposal to found the school was in this respect a response to the turbulence of dire events in the middle of the century.
The education affinity of the people of Buchen had a long history. As early as the Middle Ages there was a “Latin school” in Buchen, where gifted boys were trained to be pastors. Around 1500 there was a “German school”. The numerous Buchen students who are recorded for the early modern period have been trained in these schools. This educational tradition was continued when the sovereign ordinance of May 15, 1834 made it possible for the Baden cities to establish “higher civic schools”. The master locksmith and councilor Valentin Kieser gave the impetus for the Buchen application. A school would make it easier for the sons of citizens to choose a career, young people would possibly settle permanently in Buchen after their school days and teachers would consume their salaries on site, so the hope.
Promote happiness in life
The application for a permit of 1844 was verbatim: “The disadvantageous consequence of the inhibition of the intellectual, happiness-promoting special education of a large part of the local population has been shown by the reduced prosperity of the bourgeois population and especially the commercial class.” The application was initially rejected, but the revised version met with the hoped-for response. On April 28, 1844, the Buchen District Office received the news that “His Royal Highness the Grand Duke […] Have graciously rested the establishment of a higher middle school in Buchen […] to be approved “.
It can be said that the project “founding a school” was run by the citizens. The goal was not an elite school for an aristocratic minority, but a middle class school in the true sense of the word. After the opening ceremony on November 10, 1845, 64 students attended the new school and were taught subjects such as Latin, German, French, arithmetic, geography, natural history, singing, calligraphy and history.
The aim of the school, according to the annual report of 1846, is “to enliven, promote and maintain in the students the sense and zeal for the true, the good, the noble and the beautiful”. The founders rhetorically placed their school in the tradition of German idealism. It can be assumed that these lofty goals were undermined by an authoritarian teaching practice consistent with the conventions of the time. “Let […] the citizens’ pupils no longer just learn by heart, but understand and feel what they know, will and should do, ”the chronicle of 1848 says.
At the same time, however, the note follows that the students should not develop into “squadrons and intellectual quacks”, “who mix everything up” – probably a warning against the revolutionary machinations of the time.
The fate of the school was characterized from the beginning by the historical circumstances, so it can be summarized. Already the founding of the school in politically turbulent times, on the eve of the revolution as a bourgeois reaction to industrialization, indicated in a forward-looking manner that the Buchen Citizens School should not remain untouched by the ups and downs of history on its way into modernity. By Michael Kolbenschlag
© Fränkische Nachrichten, Saturday, November 14th, 2020
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