Odenwaldschule

The Odenwaldschule was a German school located in Heppenheim in the Odenwald. Founded in 1910, it was Germany's oldest Landerziehungsheim (), a private boarding school located in a rural setting. Edith and Paul Geheeb () established it using their concept of progressive education, which integrated the work of the head and hand. The school went bankrupt and was closed in 2015, following the revelation of numerous cases of sexual abuse of students.

The Odenwaldschule emerged as part of the reformed education movement at the beginning of the 20th century. It was founded by Paul Geheeb on 14 April 1910. Edith Geheeb's father, the town council member for Berlin, Max Cassirer, who supported the Odenwaldschule from that time onwards, financed the land purchase and the buildings.

Geheeb felt inspired by the sentence "be who you are" () from the Greek poet Pindar. The school should support the community, personality and self-determined actions. Thus the school should promote the community, personality and self-determined actions. At this point in time there was only 14 students. They were all housed in the Goethehaus.

The founders' concept was originally coined by the fundamentals of the work schools, or example in the introduction of a course system and the dispensation with year groups. All students should be able to co-create, participate and be equally responsible. The Odenwaldschule is a free community, in which the different generations treat each other impartially and can learn from each other, was the school's rules. Children and adolescents should when possible get individual learning stimuli such as intellectual, practical, musical and artistic learning methods. Learning was connected with vocational training. They lived in a mix-age living area, the families, whose head was the teacher and every year they were rearranged differently. Being on first name basis with the teacher belonged to the further characteristics of the school's educational concept, long before the emergence of anti-authoritarian schooling.

In the 1920s the school was internationally recognised and until 1938 teachers from other countries, such as England and the USA, taught there. From 1924 until 1932 the educator Martin Wagenschein worked at the school. In 1934 Paul and Edith Geheeb emigrated to Switzerland with around 25 students and some teachers and formed the Ecole d’Humanité there. In 1939 the Reicharbeitsdienst (Reich Labour Service) requested the takeover of the Odenwaldschule because it contradicted the "concept of the national socialistic schooling community." The school was run by Minna Specht from 1946 to 1951.

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