Chapter 6: Schulstrasse/Home & School in School Street

Here you are — a detour off Bahnhofstrasse into Schulstrasse/School Street!

50. Volksschule/Public School, pre-WWII. (#6 on map) Photo: Foto-Mittag Themar/Thür.

I attended classes in every room. Here the teachers changed classes, the pupils stayed put. Where you see the curtains lived Oberlehrer Stapf, the Principal. His son Erhard Stapf and I played together as children and traded stamps. This school was destroyed during World War II.

52. School Year 1928–29, at old school house behind church [#5

[Editor’s Note: the small +sign beside a name indicates that this person was dead in 1983, when Manfred reconnected with his school chums.]

53. School Year 1931. Photo: Foto-Mittag Themar/Thür. Manfred is in the niche in the back behind boy with glasses who is probably Willi Förster.

Schuljahr 1
54. School Year 1936. Photo: Foto-Mittag Themar/Thür.

[Editor’s Note: the small +sign beside a name indicates that this person was dead in 1983, when Manfred reconnected with his school chums.]

Schuljahr 2
55. School Year 1936. Photo: Foto-Mittag Themar/Thür.

[Editor’s Note: the small +sign beside a name indicates that this person was dead in 1983, when Manfred reconnected with his school chums.]

new Regelschule
56. The ‘new’ Anne Frank Public School (#90 on map). Photo: Foto-Mittag Themar/Thür.

New school building — the complex now incorporates a former War Memorial from WW I. There were the names of two Jewish boys on the one tablet. They were the sons of our kosher butcher, by the name of Kahn. The Nazis had those names chiseled out.

[Editor’s Note: The names of Fritz and Leonhard Kahn were not chiseled out of the WWI memorial; instead, it is believed, the names may have been blunted as to be rendered illegible; after the war the names were restored and repolished and are to be seen intact in the WWI memorial tablets, which are now housed in the Cemetery Church.]

57. Beamtenschule = Bureaucrats’ Training School – no kidding! 1976. (#22 on map)
58. Beamtenschule Hinterhaus/House behind Business School, 1976. (#4 on map)

We lived in the little grey house, my grandparents lived downstairs, and we lived upstairs for many years. Note little door in the red house near the back. The structure on the right of the redhouse was the outhouse for the little house, no indoor plumbing. Pipes ran along the outside of the big house for it, and into the sump. It was emptied by hand by a farmer every so often.

59. The Schwab/Rosengarten Families in front of the Beamtenschule c. 1932. (#22 on map) l/r: Berta Rosengarten, Regina and Abraham Schwab, (my grandparents), myself at 11 or 12 years old. In front is Marianne Weber, grandaughter of our landlady, Frau Vogt.

Chapter 7: Die Stadtmauer und die Türme/The Wall & the Towers

Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13

Material from M. Rosengarten, Themar, Thüringen: My Home Town may be reproduced in part or whole, in any print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes provided that the author, editor, copyright holders, and publisher (www.judeninthemar.org) are acknowledged.
© 2011 Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. © Sharon Meen, Vancouver, British Columbia