Bunce Court School
Historic residence · Otterden, England
Philosophers & religious figures
History
The Bunce Court School was an independent, private boarding school in the village of Otterden, in Kent, England. It was founded in 1933 by Anna Essinger, who had previously founded a boarding school, Landschulheim Herrlingen in the south of Germany, but after the Nazi Party seized power in 1933, she began to see that the school had no future in Germany. She quietly found a new home for the school and received permission from the parents of her pupils, most of whom were Jewish, to bring them to safety in England. The new school was called New Herrlingen School, but came to be known as Bunce Court. The school closed in 1948. Alumni, who sometimes stayed on at the school even after finishing, were devoted to the school and organized reunions for 55 years. They have referred to its "immense effect" on their lives, as "Shangri-La" and to being there as "walking on holy ground".
Text from the Wikipedia article “Bunce Court School”, CC BY-SA 4.0.
About Anna Essinger
Anna Essinger was a German Jewish educator. At the age of 20, she went to finish her education in the United States, where she encountered Quakers and was greatly influenced by their attitudes, adopting them for her own. In 1919, she returned to Germany on a Quaker war relief mission and was asked by her sister, who had founded a children's home, to help establish a school with it. She and her family founded a boarding school, the Landschulheim Herrlingen in 1926, with Anna Essinger as headmistress. In 1933, with the Nazi threat looming and the permission of all the parents, she moved the school and its 66 children, mostly Jewish, to safety in England, re-establishing it as the Bunce Court School. During the war, Essinger established a reception camp for 10,000 German children sent to England on the Kindertransports, taking some of them into the school. After the war, her school took many child survivors of Nazi concentration camps. By the time Essinger closed Bunce Court in 1948, she had taught and cared for over 900 children, most of whom called her Tante ("Aunt") Anna, or TA, for short. She remained in close contact with her former pupils for the rest of her life.
From the Wikipedia article “Anna Essinger”, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Visiting
This building is recorded as a residence of the people listed; it may be privately owned and not open to the public. Opening times, tickets and access change, so check the official website before you travel. Get directions.
