The Bunce Court School was an independent, private boarding school in the village of Otterden, in Kent, England. It was founded in 1933 by Anna Essinger, who had previously founded a boarding school, Landschulheim Herrlingen in the south of Germany, but after the Nazi Party seized power in 1933, she began to see that the school had no future in Germany. She quietly found a new home for the school and received permission from the parents of her pupils, most of whom were Jewish, to bring them to safety in England. The new school was called New Herrlingen School, but came to be known as Bunce Court. The school closed in 1948. Alumni, who sometimes stayed on at the school even after finishing, were devoted to the school and organized reunions for 55 years. They have referred to its "immense effect" on their lives, as "Shangri-La" and to being there as "walking on holy ground".
Landschulheim Herrlingen The school was founded by Anna Essinger and two of her sisters in the Swabian town of Herrlingen in 1926.Michael Luick-Thrams, "Anna Essinger and the New Herrlingen School" Parish of Otterden website. Dissertation excerpt, Creating 'New Americans': WWII-era European Refugees': Formation of American Identities. Retrieved 28 September 2011 It began as an adjunct to the children's home founded by Essinger's sister Klara in 1912. In 1925, as her own children and many of the children in care came of school age, she got the idea to turn the orphanage into a landschulheim (boarding school). Landschulheim Herrlingen opened on 1 May 1926 as a private boarding school with 18 children ranging in age from 6 to 12. Anna Essinger became head of the school and her sister Paula, a trained nurse, became the school nurse and its housekeeper. The ceremonies to open the school were attended by Theodor Heuss and Otto Hirsch from Stuttgart, as well as the mayors of Göppingen and Ulm.Anna Essinger biography Anna Essinger Gymnasium. Retrieved 28 September 2011
Landschulheim Herrlingen was non-denominational, accepting children from any faith, and coeducational. Having been influenced by progressive education in the United States, Essinger ran the school accordingly. The primary grades were taught using the Montessori method.D.M. Potten, "Genesis and exodus of a school" (PDF) AJR Information (August 1990), p. 2. Retrieved 11 October 2011 Teachers were to set an example in "learning, laughing, loving and living" and the motto for the school was "Boys and girls learn to be inquisitive, curious and independent and to find things out themselves. All work is to encourage critical thinking.""Zur Geschichte des Landschulheimes" Haus unterm regenbogen. Retrieved 2 October 2011 Individual work was encouraged. There was no testing of skills or attainment. Instead, grading was replaced by an assessment that described the development of the individual child and progress was discussed with the children. Parents received the assessment of their children in writing.
Academics were supplemented with a strong emphasis on the arts, as well as physical activity, including daily walks in the woods. The children learned two languages from the first day of school on, with emphasis on the spoken, rather than the written word. Learning was accomplished through living, whether from daily walks in the woods, from the tasks required of the children in and around the building, or at meal time, where there were "English" and "French" tables and those sitting at them would speak in those languages during the meal. The arts were also offered. In addition to painting, drawing, singing and drama,Walter Block reminscense Quakers in Britain. Retrieved 28 September 2011 the children learned to play music. In the evening, "Tante Anna" read a story, then gave each child a "good night kiss" and sent them off to bed.
Staff and pupils were on a first-name basis; Anna Essinger was generally called Tante (Aunt) Anna, or TA for short. She was a strict disciplinarian with both staff and pupils, but the environment at the school was loving and supportive. Corporal punishment was taboo.Michael Trede, Der Rückkehrer ecomed verlagsgesellschaft AG & Co. KG, Landsberg, Germany (2003), pp. 62–63 Retrieved 5 October 2011
The teachers were idealisticAnthea Gerrie, "Revealed: the wartime school that saved lives" The Jewish Chronicle (11 August 2011). Retrieved 29 September 2011 and in 1927, the school received very good early assessments. Enrolment soon grew to 60 pupils.
Escape from Nazi Germany
After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party seized power in January 1933, and with antisemitism on the rise, the school became increasingly Jewish, as some parents bowed to pressure to boycott Jewish institutions and Jewish parents found it increasingly difficult to find placement for their children.Harold Jackson, "Anna's children" The Guardian (18 July 2003). Retrieved 29 September 2011 In April 1933, when all public buildings were ordered to fly the Nazi flag and swastika, Essinger planned a day-long outing for her school, leaving the flag to fly over an empty building, a symbolic gesture, according to a nephew. Afterwards, Essinger and the school were denounced and the school came under Nazi scrutiny with a recommendation to install a school inspector at the school. In May 1933, Essinger was informed that her oldest pupils would not be allowed to take the tests for the abitur, the school-leaving certificate needed to pursue a university education, and most non-Jewish parents withdrew their children from the school.
Essinger realized that Germany was no longer a hospitable place for her school and sought to relocate it in a more secure environment abroad. She first sought a new location in Switzerland, then in the Netherlands and finally, in England,Biography of school founder Anna Essinger Anna Essinger Realschule Ulm. Retrieved 29 September 2011 where she found an old manor house dating from 1547 in Otterden, near Faversham in Kent.Photos and short history of Bunce Court Town of Faversham website. "Bunce Court, Otterden" Retrieved 28 September 2011 The house is called Bunce Court, after the family that owned the property in the 17th century."The Story of Bunce Court" Otterden Online. Retrieved 30 September 2011 Essinger raised funds in England, primarily from Quakers,"Peter Morley - A Life Rewound" Part 1 (PDF) British Academy of Film and Television Arts (2006), pp. 5–6. Retrieved 29 September 2011 initially to rent and later, to purchase Bunce Court. She informed the parents of her desire to move the school to England and received permission to take 65 children with her. The children all went home for summer vacation, not knowing they were leaving Landschulheim Herrlingen for the last time.Katharina Ludtke, Anna Essinger - Eine Padagogin Der Besonderen Art epubli.de (1 August 2011). Retrieved 20 October 2011
In summer 1933, Essinger arrived in England with the 13 pupils prohibited from taking the abitur (schooling completion exam). She set them up at Bunce Court, where they had just a few weeks to prepare for a British matriculation exam; nine of them passed. In autumn 1933, three different groups of children and staff set out on an educational trip for the Netherlands, leaving from the south, the north and the east of Germany. Anna Essinger boarded a train with one group; her sister Paula took a group through Switzerland, where they picked up two pupils who had been on vacation with their mother. All three groups arrived on the ferry in Dover and were picked up in red buses and brought to Kent, where classes began the next day. In addition, there were three children from a Berlin family fleeing Germany that had pre-arranged for their children to meet the ferry and continue on to the school.
Landschulheim Herrlingen was not officially closed, but was instead was turned over to Hugo Rosenthal (1887–1980). Although it was seized by the Nazis in 1934, it continued as a Jewish school and became a centre for Jewish life in southern Germany until 1939, when the Nazis closed it and turned it into a home for Jewish seniors, whom they forced to relocate there from various places in Württemberg. In 1942, the home was closed and its residents sent to extermination camps. Between 1943 and 1945, two of the buildings were occupied by Erwin Rommel and his family."Herrlingen (Gemeinde Blaustein, Alb-Donau-Kreis): Zur Geschichte jüdischer Einrichtungen" Alemannia Judaica. Retrieved 28 September 2011 When Rommel was forced to commit suicide, he left from this home.
New Herrlingen School The new school was called New Herrlingen, but generally known as Bunce Court. It had over 40 rooms and extensive grounds, making it an ideal location for a boarding school. From the beginning, the new school suffered from a chronic lack of funds. There was no money for a domestic or caretaking staff, so everyone, staff and pupils had daily chores and did the work, from converting stables into new dormitories, laying telephone cables and repairing furniture to gardening, growing vegetables and looking after the chickens to peeling potatoes, cleaning and polishing. The younger boys lived in a building, initially without electricity, about away from the main building. Twenty of the oldest boys lived in a dormitory built on the grounds with the help of British Quakers.Michael Luick-Thrams, "Part I: Persecution, Flight and Reception of WWII-era Refugees" See: Bunce Court Humboldt University, Berlin. Dissertation: Creating 'New Americans': WWII-Era European Refugees' Formation of American Identities (1997). Retrieved 29 September 2011 The school maintained a large vegetable garden, two greenhouses, five hundred hens, beehives and several pigs, which were fed on kitchen waste, all primarily run by pupils.Alan Major, Bunce Court, Anna Essinger and Her New Herrlingen School, Otterden Parts One, Two and Three Bygone Kent 10 #8-10 (1989), quoted in Michael Luick-Thrams, Creating 'New Americans': WWII-Era European Refugees' Formation of American Identities (1997). See footnotes 138–148. Retrieved 3 October 2011
In later years, during the Blitz on London, children were evacuated to the countryside for their safety, but in 1933, when Bunce Court opened, England was safe and war was years away. English people were unaware of what was taking place in Germany and did not understand why Essinger and the school had left Germany. The new school was makeshift and finances meagre, causing the English education inspectors to be initially unfavourable toward New Herrlingen. Within a year or two, however, enough improvements had been made that they came to realize the school was viable and unique. In October 1937, there were 68 pupils enrolled at Bunce Court, 41 were boys and 27 were girls. Of the 68, all but three were boarders and all but 12 were foreign-born. By this time, the school had won the respect of the authorities. After three days spent visiting Bunce Court in 1937, inspectors from the British government's Ministry of Education reported their amazement "at what could be achieved in teaching with limited facilities" and that they were "convinced it was the personality, enthusiasm and interest of teachers rather than their teaching 'apparatus' that made the school work competently".
New Herrlingen was home, so that even after finishing their education, some pupils would stay on for a number of months, living at the school while working elsewhere, their wages largely going for their upkeep."Peter Morley - A Life Rewound" Part 1 (PDF) British Academy of Film and Television Arts (2006), pp. 10–12. Retrieved 29 September 2011
Finances