Windsor Mountain School

Windsor Mountain School
Location
Lenox, Massachusetts
Information
Type	high school
Established	1944
Enrollment	c.250
Color(s)	no uniform

The Windsor Mountain School was a coeducational boarding high school in Lenox, Massachusetts.

The school was established in Lenox in 1944 by German Jewish educational reformer Max Bondy and his wife Gertrud Bondy. The Bondys had earlier established an international school in Germany, initially in Gandersheim and later in Marienau. When the rise of Nazism threatened their enterprise, they left Germany, re-establishing their school in Switzerland in 1937. In 1939, they moved to the United States, reopening their school in Windsor, Vermont, and then later in Manchester, Vermont at the site of the Wilburton Inn, before moving it to Massachusetts. Shortly after art collector Grenville Lindall Winthrop's death in 1943, they purchased his Carrère and Hastings-designed mansion in Lenox and opened their new school.

In 1951, after Max Bondy's death, his son Heinz succeeded him as headmaster. Heinz Bondy led the school for 25 years until it closed in the mid-1970s.

Operated according to progressive education principles, the school was unusually democratic in its governance, with a student government that was empowered to make all nonacademic rules. As of 1970, there was no dress code, student publications were not censored, and there were no restrictions on student political activities. The school's philosophy held that the exercise of freedom would help students become responsible, self-directing people.

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