StandortKlosterstraße 11
Alte Landesschule, Waldeck´s first scholar school
The Alte Landesschule can look back on a history of more than 430 years and it belongs to Hessen´s oldest schools. This humanist aca- demic school was founded by the earls of Waldeck on May 7th, 1579 in the building of an anterior Franciscan monastery (1487 - 1546).
It is considered to be the second oldest high school in the province of Hessen-Nassau. The educational institution - with an almost academic character - had among their principals names of significant rank as Rudolph Goclenius (Gockel, 1547 - 1628), later professor of metaphysics in Marburg (a mountain on the moon was named after him), the courageous humanist Johannes Schurtzfleisch, who saved Korbach from the destruction of the Thirty Years´ War, the historian Louis Curtze (1807 - 70) from Waldeck or the significant reform pedagogue Alfred Ehrentreich (1896 - 1998). In his former life, the first principal of Korbach´s high school Lazarus Schoner (1543 - 1607) had been a philosophy professor in Marburg.
Only a rest of the anterior cloister of the Franciscan monastery built in 1487 is still conserved. A well, flanked by two pointed archs to the left and to the right, and the gravestone of the abbot Jacob Altena.
During the Seven Years´ War the building of the anterior monastery was almost completely being destroyed. At the instigation of Prince Friedrich von Waldeck a new building called "Fridericianum" was erected (inauguration 1773).
Until Waldeck´s affiliation to Preussen in 1929 the administration was in the hands of Waldeck. In 1929 a gym with an art room was added. In the context of the "Reconstruction of the Sixth Form" the "Staatliche Landesgymnasium" on January, 1st 1938 had to be renamed against the will of many alumni. It was given the name "Alte Landesschule".
For almost 300 years the school bell (das "Klosterglöckchen") called the adolescents to school. Alumni also call the Landesschule affectionately "Klosterschule".
The Second World War brought considerable losses. Many alumni had to give their lives, some of them young. A memorial in the patio of the old school reminds of the students and teachers killed in action during the First and Second World War. After the end of the war the school system was reformed completely. From 1955 to 1957 the school building was extended. As there was still not enough room, in 1971 a bigger school building in the Solinger Straße was inaugurated, in which the present Landesschule is situated. Today the anterior school building in the KlosterStraße accommodates the Kreisvolkshochschule and a section of the Berufliche Schulen.
High school gym with Turnvater Jahn´s gymnast´s cross
The high-school graduates of the Alte Landesschule for a long time could count themselves among the "intellectual elite", as a number of them had gone up in the world out of Waldeck, for example the statesman and diplomate Carl Josias von Bunsen (1791 - 1860), the important medics Hermann Kümmel (1852 - 1937), August Bier (1861 - 1949) or Rudolf Klapp (1873 - 1949), the theologian Victor Schultze (1873 - 1949), the historian Varnhagen (1753 - 1829), the detergent manufacturer Fritz Henkel (1848 -1930) or the publicist Wilhelm Schwaner (1863 - 1944). For centuries the Landesgymnasium was considered to be the intellectual center of Waldeck. The Landesschule did not only produce statesmen and scientists, but also the important tennis player Rainer Schüttler (Abitur 1995), the football world champion Annika Niemeier (Abitur 2006), the musician Matthias Reim or the authoress Cornelia Stella Gliem (Abitur 1992).
© Alexander Ruhl/Florian Mitze/ M. Möller
Literatur:
Hans Osterhold: Meine Stadt. Korbacher Bauten erzählen Stadtgeschichte, hrsg. vom Magistrat der Kreisstadt Korbach, 3. Aufl., Korbach 2004.
Ein Rundgang durch die alte Stadt, bearb. von Ursula Wolkers, hrsg. vom Wilhelm Bing Verlag und Magistrat der Stadt Korbach mit Förderung der Sparkassenstiftung Waldeck-Frankenberg, Korbach 1999.
425 Jahre Alte Landesschule Korbach - 2004, bearb. von Robert Gassner und Mathias Bode, hrsg. von der Alten Landesschule - Gymnasium des Landkreises Waldeck - Frankenberg, Korbach 2004.
400 Jahre Alte Landesschule Korbach - 1579-1979, bearb. von Konrad Heuser, Karl-Heinz Keudel, Ferdinand Peroutka und Joachim Rausch, hrsg. von der Alten Landesschule - Gymnasium des Landkreises Waldeck-Frankenberg,