Hohe Schule, Loosdorf, Austria

The Hohe Schule (meaning: "The High School") in Loosdorf near Melk was a Protestant school open from ca. 1574 until 1627. It was built in 1574 or a few years earlier by John William of Losenstein as a private Lutheran German grammar school in Lower Austria. According to the school statutes the school was for the youth of the nobility and non-nobility. John William also restored the nearby castle 'Schallaburg' and parish church in Loosdorf in renaissance style. The Hohe Schule has a small inner courtyard and is noted for its characteristic arcades and the rib vaults in the corridors.

Two original copies of the statutes of the school (in 16th century German: "die Loßdorffische Schulordnung"), which were printed in Augsburg in 1574, are still left. The statutes resemble those of the Lutheran grammar school of Strasbourg (the predecessor of the University of Strasbourg). Some parts on school rules and punishments even are literally the same, but they do differ on some points. However, unlike many school statutes in 16th century Germany these statutes are not a mere copy of other statutes, but relatively original. The role of the Hohe Schule in the context of (contra)reformation at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century in Europe has been documented by the University of Vienna. According to the statutes the education was adapted to the talents of the students. Pupils could start from the age of 4 to 6, which was relatively young, as the Landschaftsschule of Linz did not accept pupils under the age of six. In the Loosdorfian school the pupils would learn to read, write and speak both German and Latin, music, religion, mathematics and a few other subjects.

In 1592 it got the status of Landschaftsschule, that meant a school for the nobility of Lower Austria with subsidy from the estates of the knights and the lords of Lower Austria. The reason for that was that the mainly Protestant lords and knight of the parliament of Lower Austria wanted a replacement for the short lived Landschaftsschule of Vienna that had been closed a few years earlier by the emperor. In 1591 they decided not to build a new Landschaftsschule school, but to support existing schools instead. They granted an annual subsidy of five hundred or six hundred guilders and after a school inspection in 1592 that was raised to one thousand guilders, but from 1607 on that probably gruadually got less as the subsidy for the other Protestant Landschaftsschule in Horn in that year also was diminished from one thousand to five hundred guilders.

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