Former Students. Schloss Neubeuern.

I believe that a school that only teaches cramming is out of place, but that in the complexity of today’s world, it must instead encourage freer thinking and engagement with the issues. That’s what I think is important today and not this “now you learn pages 1 to 10”, something like that – so that young people are better prepared for the problems out there in the world.

Like every organisation and every company, Schloss Neubeuern has gone through difficult times time and again in its hundred years of existence. But I have never experienced a foundation of friendship and solidarity as strong as ours. It means a great deal to me to be able to play my part in ensuring that our students can continue to find their footing on this foundation for the next hundred years and thus develop into upright, responsible people – which our world urgently needs.

If I think of just one event, it’s my first kiss in the rose garden. I also think of the nights when the window panes rattled in the storm and, when the moon was bright, you could see as far as the nearby snow-capped mountains, even at night. And I remember the view down to the village. You somehow felt like you were between two worlds – not quite in heaven, not quite on earth, but floating somewhere in between.

I came to Neubeuern in year nine and it was really my heart’s desire because I realised at my old school that I wasn’t getting the education and support I wanted there. And it’s the individual support that is the beauty of Neubeuern – the fact that so many different characters and nationalities come together here, but everyone is accepted for who they are and appreciated for exactly that. And that’s what I’ve always found really great – that everyone can develop freely here in their own way.

I came to Neubeuern in 1951, just a few years after the school reopened. At that time, we still had to grow into simpler post-war conditions, for example, we still ate out of tin plates or lived in rooms with 10 beds. However, we realised how lucky we were to be there. The boarding school and village, embedded in an incomparable landscape, became my home early on and remained so. I experienced a variety of classmates and interesting teachers at a boarding school that was constantly changing. Looking back, school and home under one roof seems to me to be a special form of the concept of ‘challenge and support’. To this day, despite or because of the many years I spent there, I still have fond memories and a lasting attachment to Neubeuern.

The special feeling about Neubeuern is probably different for everyone. But one thing is true for almost everyone: for us, the statement “friends for life” is not a marketing phrase. I came here as a 14-year-old. Now I’m almost sixty and the people I met here when I was 14 are still my best friends. Even if we don’t see each other for a while, this feeling of friendship remains. It’s a family feeling – we all have our own families – but we’re also a Neubeur family. It’s something like home.

Julie von Wendelstadt developed the concept for Schule Schloss Neubeuern together with the headmaster Dr Josef Rieder. At the time, he was in charge of a boarding school in Switzerland, which was already run in a somewhat more progressive way. The idea was not just to cram the subject matter, but – just as Neubeuern is still run today – to have guilds, such as the voluntary fire brigade, a cooks’ guild, music and theatre guilds and much more. Pupils should not only be occupied with pure knowledge, but should also be able to develop their personalities by working together. This was probably the basic idea as early as 1925.

What did I take away from Neubeuern … apart from the high school diploma and apart from the realisation about social hierarchies – I think a happy childhood. And also a bit of networking, which wasn’t done in this elite area back then. I spent three years at a state school in Rosenheim until I was kicked out and in Neubeuern I realised what a difference it made to be in such an elite small class – not having to stand up when the teacher asked a question and not being together with thirty-three others, but also being encouraged – that was really good.