
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a Schulprogramm was an annual printed publication by secondary schools. This publication typically combined the institution's annual report with a scientific treatise and was distributed among schools through the exchange. The Schulprogramm in Germany, Austria, and the former German-speaking regions of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States serves as a unique and invaluable resource for researching the development of the school system.
Origin
The Schulprogramm originated from invitations sent by educational institutions for their annual examinations and lectures, which were forerunners of the
Abitur
''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...
. Printed invitations date back to the late 16th century and are derived from what were known as . By the 18th century, it became increasingly common for a "''Gymnasium Academicum''" to print invitations for individual special courses, as these events were often open to the public.
The teaching program of the respective school year was listed in printed booklets in tabular form and provided with explanations. These event calendars were often enhanced by treatises written in Latin, in which the professors discussed the subjects of their teaching and showcased their scientific excellence. Occasionally, these publications were collected, bound in chronological order, and preserved as "''Opuscula Professorum''."

In 1824, a decree of the Ministry of Education of 23 August concerning the grammar school examination programs made it obligatory for all
Prussia
Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...
n
grammar schools
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented Se ...
to give regular accounts of the work done, the content of the teaching, and the examinations in the form of programs that were to be published once a year. Shortly afterwards, other states followed this example, such as
Bavaria
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
(1825),
Saxony
Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...
(1833),
Baden
Baden (; ) is a historical territory in southern Germany. In earlier times it was considered to be on both sides of the Upper Rhine, but since the Napoleonic Wars, it has been considered only East of the Rhine.
History
The margraves of Ba ...
(1836), and a nationwide exchange was organized, which was joined by the Free Cities of
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...
and
Lübeck
Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...
as early as 1831, Saxony and other states in 1836.
The programs facilitated the shared exchange of knowledge and experiences, as well as further training opportunities. They also served as a means of public relations. In addition, the Prussian school inspectorate was able to achieve a level of standardization through these programs.
Following the Prussian model, annual reports were also introduced in
Austria
Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
in the 19th century.
In contrast to Germany, this tradition was continued even after the end of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, and annual reports have consistently been published since then.
Construction

In the following decades, the Schulprogramm was given a uniform structure, which was specified for Prussia as follows:
* Treatise on a scientific topic by the director or a member of the teaching staff (compulsory until 1872, then optional as a supplement);
* School News:
** Doctrinal Constitution;
** Curriculum for the school year;
** General curriculum;
** Distribution of subjects among the individual teachers;
** Special curriculum of the classes;
** Overview of the orders of general interest issued;
** Chronicle of the past school year;
** Statistical News;
** Curatorium and Teaching College of the Institution;
** Frequency of the institution/names of the high school graduates;
** Status of the teaching apparatus;
** Budget of the institution;
** Foundations of the school;
** Special Notices to Parents;

In contrast to today's so-called , the programs of the 19th century were based on different principles. Rather than outlining objectives and profiles for future school development, they provided reports on the previous school year. However, the distinct school profile was still clearly recognizable in these reports. The Schulprogramm is most comparable to the yearbooks of American schools and
college
A college (Latin: ''collegium'') may be a tertiary educational institution (sometimes awarding degrees), part of a collegiate university, an institution offering vocational education, a further education institution, or a secondary sc ...
s.
Starting in 1899, the programs were officially renamed as annual reports. Although this name change took time to become widely accepted, the term Schulprogramm is still commonly used for these reports today. Additionally, the much older lecture advertisements have long been categorized in literature as Schulprogramm.
Success and crisis
The idea of standardizing and exchanging the Schulprogramm had both positive and negative effects.
As early as 1860, 350 institutions participated in this exchange. In 1869, some schools already had more than 10,000 copies. In 1872, the requirement to include a treatise, which had been mandatory, was changed to an optional inclusion. However, by this time, the authorities were increasingly overwhelmed by the logistics of the exchange. Therefore, in 1876, the exchange was handed over to the Teubner publishing house in
Leipzig
Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
, which could continue until 1916 with great logistical commitment. At this time, C. Struckmann estimates, that "a maximum of 50,000 programs were available at a Prussian school" with continuous collecting activity.
The original goal of creating a platform for further education and pedagogical exchange was lost amidst the overwhelming amount of material. In addition, there were problems with archiving and cataloguing. While in some schools this was done according to the school locations (provenance principle), in others this was done according to the topics of the treatises (pertinence principle), which destroyed the coherence of the tradition. Some schools refrained from cataloguing altogether, which made all the material inaccessible. In many cases, this old stock was increasingly perceived as a burden. A decree issued in 1943 declared the Schulprogramm to be undoubtedly mostly dispensable and ordered them to be transferred to the scrap collection.
In the 1960s, it was common for anything that survived this segregation to end up in the trash or the antiquarian bookstore. The collection of Schulprogramm publications at the
Justus Liebig University in Giessen was created by purchasing 12,000 copies from the antiquarian bookshop trade in 1969 at a unit price of 0.66 DM. This stock was considerably increased by donations from schools, which raised a further 35,000 copies in the course of 1970, and the purchase of 34,000 Schulprogramm, purchased from Vienna from 1974 to 1978 at a price of DM 0.40 each.
Meaning

Due to occasional issues with
bibliographic
Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliograph ...
accessibility, the value of the Schulprogramm as a source has developed gradually. In the foreword to the catalogue of the collection in the Lübeck City Library, it is stated that Schulprogramm is one of the most distinguished source genres for research in the fields of school history, history of education, historical sociology of education, school folklore, and the history of ideology.
The treatises provide a insight into the wide-ranging scientific interests of the teaching staff. They represent the high standards maintained by grammar schools in particular. Additionally, especially before the advent of specialized journals, these treatises served as a platform for local history and educational discussions. They also reflected contemporary trends in the scientific community, such as the introduction of modern foreign languages like French and English or the rapid rise of the natural sciences in the second half of the 19th century.
In the meantime, some Schulprogramm treatises have even gained special scholarly importance, for example when they contain editions of remote, including literary texts, which have not been replaced in the meantime. In 1898, for instance, Alfred Puls edited a
Low German prayer book from the 14th century as part of the scientific supplement, and in 1904 and 1906, Johann Claussen published the letters of the philologist Johannes Caselius, written in 1589, in Schulprogramm.
Christian Heinrich Postels and Jacob von Melle's description of a journey after the Netherlands and England in 1683 was first edited in 1891 in a Lübeck Schulprogramm.

The actual annual reports are a treasure trove of data and facts that would otherwise be difficult to collect. For some schools, for example, those of the
German eastern territories, they represent their only tradition after the destruction of the war, especially through the chronological parts required by the Prussian instructors in the Schulprogramm. The lists of pupils and teachers are often important sources from which, for example, the joint school attendance of well-known persons or teacher-pupil relationships can be reconstructed.
In some cases, however, which mainly concern West German institutions, the chronicles of the schools and the reports on what had been achieved could be continued in other publications after the end of the accountability, some schools still publish official yearbooks that provide information on special student activities, projects, new subjects, and retired and newly hired teachers. However, the content is quite different and often depends on the interest and special commitment of individual teachers. In addition, there are sometimes semi-official publications, e.g. publications by alumni, friends, or support associations of the grammar schools.
Tradition

In addition to the already mentioned collections in Giessen and Lübeck, extensive holdings of Schulprogramm can be found above all in the central Prussian collection of the former Reich Office for Schools in Berlin, since 1997 in the , as well as in the library of the
Francke Foundations
The Francke Foundations (Franckesche Stiftungen), also known as Glauchasche Anstalten were founded in 1695 in Halle (Saale), Halle, Germany as a Christian, social and educational work by August Hermann Francke
The Francke Foundations are today ...
in
Halle (Saale)
Halle (Saale), or simply Halle (), is the second largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is the sixth-most populous city in the area of former East Germany after (East Berlin, East) Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Chem ...
and (collected from 1836 to 1918) in the Hamburg
Christianeum
The Gymnasium Christianeum is a famous former Latin school (German: ''Lateinschule'') in Hamburg, northern Germany. Founded in 1738 by King Christian VI of Denmark, it is now housed in a building planned by Danish designer Arne Jacobsen.
His ...
.
The
Düsseldorf University and State Library has a collection of around 40,000 Schulprogramm, which it has indexed, digitized, and made available on the Internet since 2009 – including in the journal database (ZDB).
In 2014, the ULB Düsseldorf began to catalogue and digitize the Schulprogramm collection of the Görres Gymnasium Düsseldorf in the same way as its holdings. The aim is to create a digital collection in which almost the entire stock of Schulprogramm in Germany will be made accessible in a more in depth form.
In the USA, the library of the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
has a larger holding, based on 16,555 German and Austrian programs from the period 1850 to 1918, which came from the state grammar school in
Graz
Graz () is the capital of the Austrian Federal states of Austria, federal state of Styria and the List of cities and towns in Austria, second-largest city in Austria, after Vienna. On 1 January 2025, Graz had a population of 306,068 (343,461 inc ...
and were acquired in 1954 through a Swiss antiquarian bookshop. In 1961, a printed catalogue was published, which is arranged alphabetically by the author. The humanities titles, which comprise about one third of the collection and were considered to be more important in terms of content than the natural science titles, are also accessible via an English language keyword index.
Bibliographies
The first bibliographies of Schulprogramm's writings were published within the Schulprogramm itself. Notable compilations include those by Wilhelm Vetter (Ordered Directory of Treatises, which appeared in the school writings of all educational institutions participating in the program exchange from 1851 to 1863. 2 parts, program of the Gymnasium
Luckau
Luckau (Lower Sorbian: ''Łuków'') is a city in the district of Dahme-Spreewald in the States of Germany#States, federal state of Brandenburg, in eastern Germany. Known for its beauty, it has been dubbed "the Pearl of Lower Lusatia".
Origin of t ...
, 1864 and 1865) and Joseph Terbeck (Ordered Directory of the Treatises, which appeared in the school writings of all the educational institutions participating in the program exchange from 1864 to 1868. Program of the , Rheine 1868). A continuation is the Systematic Ordered Directory of those treatises, speeches, and poems published by Franz Hübl in Vienna in 1874, which are contained in the secondary Schulprogramm of Austria since 1870–1873 and in those of Prussia and Bavaria since 1869–1872.
Between 1876 and 1910, Rudolf Klussmann compiled the Systematic Directory of Treatises, which was published in five volumes by the Teubner publishing house. This work encompasses the school publications of all educational institutions involved in the program exchange. The programs were indexed in 13 thematically subdivided main groups as well as through an index of places and authors. Between 1890 and 1931, the annual index of treatises published at German schools was published by the
Royal Library (later the State Library), arranged according to the author's alphabet with subject and place indexes.
The most extensive bibliography, with about 55,000 titles listed, is the Index of program treatises of German, Austrian and Swiss schools of the years 1825–1918 compiled by Franz Kössler based on the Giessen holdings (4 volumes 1987 and supplementary volume 1991). It is arranged alphabetically by author and contains a directory of places and schools. Schulprogramm has been discussed in the educational press in the past. For example, the Zeitschrift für das Gymnasialwesen 1847–1912 (list of digitized copies) contains countless reviews of Prussian Schulprogramm.
References
Bibliography
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External links
{{Commons category multi, Schulprogramm, position=left
School programmes on the Internet comprehensive annotated link list of th
Giessen University Library
Database of Schulprogramm
inventory of the Gotha Research Library.
* Lothar Kalok: Schulprogramm : An almost forgotten literary genre, 2007, ur
nbn:de:hebis:26-opus-73791(full text).
Schulprogramm/annual reports. On the history of a little-noticed form of publication(PDF; 146 kB) at
Library for Research into the History of Education
Digitised Schulprogramm/annual reportsat Scripta Paedagogica Online.
* Digitised Schulprogramm at th
ULB Düsseldorf
Digitised full texts of selected Schulprogrammat Giessen University Library.
Digitised annual reports of Austrian schoolsat Austrian Literature Online.
Digitised Schulprogrammfrom Rhineland-Palatinate libraries in dilibri Rheinland-Pfalz.
* Schulprogramm of the Warendorf Latin School from 1594 (today
Gymnasium Laurentianum.
Publications
History of education in Austria
Educational research