The Karl Liebknecht School (German: ''Karl-Liebknecht-Schule''), named after

Karl Liebknecht Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; ; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German politician and revolutionary socialist. A leader of the far-left wing of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Liebknecht was a co-founder of both ...

, was a German-language

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

. It was established for the children of German refugees to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. It opened in 1924 and was closed in 1939. A number of students and teachers were caught up in the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

and the so-called Hitler Youth Conspiracy, many of them executed.

Background

After the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

, communists in other countries were encouraged to come to the Soviet Union to help build the world's first

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

state. Germany under the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...

was in turmoil, particularly during the between 1919 and 1923, and had a large Communist Party. Numerous members went to the Soviet Union, both for training and as refugees from persecution by political enemies. The Karl Liebknecht School was founded to educate the children of German refugees in the German language, however some Russians also sent their children there.Walter Laqueur
''Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany''
Tauris Parke Paperbacks (2004), pp. 168–169 . Originally published in 2000 as ''Geboren in Deutschland: Der Exodus der jüdischen Jugend nach 1933''. Retrieved November 14, 2011 The school acquired a nickname, ''Shkola Nashikh Mechtei'' ("the school of our dreams") and had an orchestra, which was popular with local Muscovites.

Hans Hauska Hans may refer to: __NOTOC__ People * Hans (name), a masculine given name * Hans Raj Hans, Indian singer and politician ** Navraj Hans, Indian singer, actor, entrepreneur, cricket player and performer, son of Hans Raj Hans ** Yuvraj Hans, Punjabi a ...

, a member of the German Theater's Left Column, led the choir.Thomas Phelps
"Links wo das Herz ist"
Justus Liebig University Giessen (October 27–28, 1997). See footnotes 39 and 40. Retrieved November 29, 2011 In the first years of the school, as was the case in early Soviet education, there was no history taught. Also, common to other schools employing ideas of

progressive education Progressive education, or educational progressivism, is a pedagogical movement that began in the late 19th century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement. T ...

, there no tests or grades, however some by 1935, some practices were "denounced as

Trotskyite Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

" and were abandoned. With the help of headmistress Elsa Weber, the school moved into a proper school building on September 1, 1928.Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin, (2005
p. 51
/ref>

Purges and closing

During the 1934-1935 school year, there were 750 pupils at the school and a new headmistress, a Hungarian named Sophie Krammer.Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin, (2005
p. 114
/ref> The previous

headmaster A headmaster/headmistress, head teacher, head, school administrator, principal or school director (sometimes another title is used) is the staff member of a school with the greatest responsibility for the management of the school. Role While s ...

was Helmut Schinkel, who had begun working there in 1932,Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin, (2005
p. 100
/ref> but had made political mistakes.Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin, (2005
p. 115
/ref> For the final five months, the headmaster was a Russian, named Antip Vassilyevitch Brukov. The Soviet–German relations worsened following the coming of the Nazis to power in Germany in 1933, which seriously affected the school. In the middle of the school year, a group of pupils were deemed by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

to be a

fascist Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...

group. The pupil determined to be the leader, in the ninth grade, and another child were arrested, along with one teacher. Each was later sentenced.Natalia Mussienko and Alexander Vatlin, (2005
pp. 168-169
/ref> In 1936, the NKVD determined that among the teachers was a "counter-revolutionary, fascist-Trotskyite group". Other cases took place both inside and outside the school. In one case in 1936, a married couple was driven to suicide and in 1937, a number of pupils were executed. Two teachers, Kurt Bertram and Rudolf Senglaub, and thirteen students were arrested in the Hitler Youth Conspiracy, including Kurt Ahrendt, a leader of the Young Pioneers,Hans Schafranek
"Kontingentierte 'Volksfeinde' und 'Agenturarbeit'"
Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung (January 2001). Retrieved November 26, 2011 who was executed three weeks after his arrest. By the time the purges subsided, 25 teachers and 40 pupils and former pupils had been arrested, as well as many parents. Many never returned. The school was closed in 1938 after it was decided that schools for national minorities were not in sync with the communist party line. When the school was closed, children were sent to local Russian schools, to which not all children adapted well.Atina Grossmann
"German Communism and New Women"
in: Helmut Gruber and Pamela M. Graves (eds.) ''Women and Socialism, Socialism and Women: Europe Between the Two World Wars'' (1998), pp. 160. Berghahn Books. Retrieved November 13, 2011 There was a summer camp for the German-speaking children, the

Ernst Thälmann Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann (; 16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was a German communist politician and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933. A committed communist, Thälmann sought to overthrow the liberal democr ...

summer camp, which was also closed at the same time.

Notable pupils

Stefan Doernberg Stefan Doernberg (21 June 1924 – 3 May 2010) was a German writer, secondary school teacher and Researcher of Contemporary History as well as the final director of International Relations Institute for the Academy of the State and Jurisprudenc ...

Peter Florin Peter Florin (2 October 1921 – 17 February 2014) was an East German politician and diplomat. Early life Florin was born in Cologne on 2 October 1921.

Marianne Lange-Weinert Marianne () has been the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, as well as a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty. Marianne is displayed i ...

, author and daughter of

Erich Weinert Erich Bernhard Gustav Weinert (4 August 1890 – 20 April 1953) was a Germans, German Communist writer and a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Early life Weinert was born in 1890 in Magdeburg to a family supporting the Social ...

Wolfgang Leonhard Wolfgang Leonhard (16 April 1921 – 17 August 2014) was a German political author and historian of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and Communism. A German Communist whose family had fled Hitler's Germany and who was educated ...

Konrad Wolf Konrad Wolf (20 October 1925 – 7 March 1982) was an East Germany, East German film director. He was the son of writer, doctor and diplomat Friedrich Wolf (writer), Friedrich Wolf, and the younger brother of Stasi spymaster Markus Wolf. "Koni" ...

Markus Wolf Markus Johannes Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006), also known as Mischa, was a German spymaster who served as the head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (), the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for Sta ...

References

{{Reflist

Background

Purges and closing

Notable pupils

See also

References

Further reading