Bunce Court School

New Herrlingen School at Bunce Court
Main building at Bunce Court
Location
Otterden, Kent England (after moving from Germany)
Coordinates	51 14 47.15 N, 0 46 37.44 E
Information
School type	private boarding school
Religious affiliation(s)	Jewish, Quaker
Opened	1 May 1926
Closed	27 July 1948
Headmistress	Anna Essinger
Teaching staff	Bruno Adler, Hanna Bergas, Erich Katz, Wilhelm Marckwald, Hans Meyer
Gender	co-educational
Enrollment	64–140 pupils
Average class size	5–8 pupils
Education system	progressive education
Language	English
Campus	Bunce Court
Tuition	£100 per year
Communities served	Jewish refugees from Nazism
Alumni	Frank Auerbach, Leslie Brent, Gerard Hoffnung, Frank Marcus, Peter Morley, Michael Roemer, Helmut and Richard Sonnenfeldt

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".

The school was originally founded by Anna Essinger and two of her sisters in the Swabian town of Herrlingen in 1926. The school 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.