Anna Essinger (1879–1960) was a German-Jewish educator, visionary headmistress, and pioneer of progressive education. At a time when conventional German schooling often emphasized strict discipline and obedience, Essinger built schools around a very different set of ideals: communal living, mutual respect, practical work, and shared responsibility.
When the Nazi regime rose to power in 1933 and began bringing Germany’s schools under ideological control, Essinger refused to let Nazi doctrine reshape the education of her students. Instead, she made an extraordinary decision. Working quietly and with the help of trusted colleagues and supporters, she arranged to move much of her school community out of Germany and establish a new school in the English countryside.
Early Life and the Vision for Progressive Education
Anna Essinger was born on September 15, 1879, into a large Jewish family in Ulm, Germany.
At the age of 20, she left Germany for the United States, initially living with an aunt in Nashville, Tennessee. She later pursued higher education and eventually earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin.
Her years in America helped shape both her educational philosophy and her humanitarian outlook. Essinger came into contact with Quakers, whose emphasis on equality, social responsibility, and practical service would remain important throughout her life.
After World War I, she returned to Germany and became involved in Quaker relief work. In the difficult postwar years, she helped organize food and clothing assistance for children suffering from hunger and poverty.
By the time Essinger turned her attention fully to education, she had developed a philosophy that rejected authoritarian teaching in favor of independence, curiosity, cooperation, and responsibility.
In 1926, with the support of several members of her family, Essinger opened the Landschulheim Herrlingen near Ulm. The progressive, coeducational boarding school grew out of a children’s home previously established by her sister Klara.
A Radical School Built on Equality and Respect
The Landschulheim Herrlingen was a significant departure from conventional schooling.
Boys and girls studied together, and children from different religious backgrounds were welcomed. Montessori methods influenced the education of younger pupils, while the broader philosophy of the school emphasized practical learning, individual development, and participation in a shared community.
Students were expected to take responsibility for the daily life of the school. They gardened, cooked, cleaned, helped maintain the grounds, and contributed to the work required to keep the community running.
The goal was not to eliminate discipline. In fact, Essinger herself was known for being demanding.
Students and staff affectionately called her “Tante Anna” (meaning “Aunt Anna”) but former pupils remembered her as formidable, strong-willed, and uncompromising when it came to questions of honesty, responsibility, and character.
For Essinger, freedom and responsibility were inseparable. Children should be given independence, but they also needed to understand how their actions affected others.
Her philosophy was captured in the motto often associated with her:
“Give children a hand, give them a chance.”
Defying Hitler in Plain Sight
The political environment surrounding Herrlingen changed dramatically after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
The Nazi government rapidly brought schools and other institutions under its control, promoting antisemitism, militarism, and loyalty to the regime.
Essinger recognized almost immediately that her educational principles were incompatible with National Socialism.
One episode came to symbolize her quiet resistance.
When Nazi authorities required the swastika flag to be displayed on Hitler’s birthday, Essinger complied with the letter of the order, but arranged for the students and staff to be away from the school on an excursion while the flag flew over an empty building.
She later explained the reasoning behind the gesture with a remark commonly translated as:
“Above an empty building, the flag can neither convey nor harm as much.”
But such acts could not shield the school indefinitely.
Essinger was denounced and came under official investigation. Nazi authorities considered placing a state-approved administrator over the school, threatening the independence on which its educational philosophy depended.
By then, Essinger had already concluded that her school had no future under the Nazi regime.
She began preparing to leave Germany.
The Secret Journey to England
Essinger’s solution was audacious: rather than allow the Nazis to transform her school, she would establish it somewhere else.
With the assistance of colleagues and supporters in Britain, including Quaker contacts who helped raise funds, Essinger secured a new home for the school at Bunce Court, an old manor house near Otterden in Kent.
The plan had to be handled discreetly.
Parents were informed and gave permission for their children to leave, but the true purpose of the journey was kept as inconspicuous as possible. Students traveled in separate groups so that their departure would resemble ordinary school travel rather than the permanent relocation of an institution.
In October 1933, about 65 children made their way out of Germany and eventually crossed the English Channel.
At Bunce Court, Essinger rebuilt her school in exile.
Not everyone from Herrlingen left Germany. Essinger arranged for educator Hugo Rosenthal to take over the remaining institution, which continued as a Jewish boarding school for several years before Nazi authorities finally forced it to close in 1939.
The move to England nevertheless allowed Essinger to preserve the kind of education she believed in, and brought dozens of children beyond the immediate reach of the Nazi regime.
Bunce Court: A School and a Refuge
Bunce Court quickly became more than a transplanted German boarding school.
As persecution intensified across Europe during the 1930s, increasing numbers of refugee children arrived from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. Many had been forced out of their homes or schools because they were Jewish.
After the Kindertransport began in late 1938, bringing thousands of predominantly Jewish children from Nazi-controlled Europe to Britain without their parents, Bunce Court welcomed additional refugees.
Essinger also helped with the enormous humanitarian effort surrounding their arrival. She was involved in establishing the reception camp at Dovercourt, where newly arrived Kindertransport children were temporarily housed while permanent homes and placements were found for them.
At Bunce Court, meanwhile, Essinger tried to give displaced children something that went beyond physical safety. She wanted to give them a sense of belonging.
Children participated in art, music, gardening, sports, practical work, and communal life. They helped cook and clean, cared for animals, and shared responsibility for the school.
These activities were not simply household chores. For children whose lives had been disrupted by persecution and exile, they offered routine, purpose, and a way to become part of a community again.
Caring for Children After the Holocaust
The end of World War II did not end Bunce Court’s humanitarian role.
After 1945, the school received children who had survived ghettos, forced labor, and concentration camps. Some were orphans. Others did not yet know whether their parents or siblings had survived.
These children presented a challenge few educators of the era were prepared to address.
Long before the modern term “trauma-informed care” existed, Essinger understood that children who had experienced profound loss and violence needed more than academic instruction.
They needed stability, trust, meaningful work, companionship, and a community in which they could begin rebuilding their lives. Bunce Court provided those things as much as it could.
Essinger’s approach did not erase what the children had endured, but it gave many of them the structure and security necessary to begin imagining a future again.
Legacy and Impact
Anna Essinger directed Bunce Court until 1948, when she retired and the school closed.
By then, hundreds of children had passed through her care.
Former pupils went on to careers in science, education, medicine, art, film, public service, and other fields. Many retained a powerful attachment to Bunce Court and to “Tante Anna,” describing the school not simply as a place of education but as the home and community they had lost elsewhere.
Former students continued gathering for Bunce Court reunions for decades after the school’s closure.
Essinger spent the remainder of her life in England and died on May 30, 1960, at the age of 80.
Her legacy rests not only on the children she brought out of Nazi Germany, but on the philosophy that guided her long before Hitler came to power.
She believed children deserved dignity, independence, meaningful responsibility, and the chance to become part of a community.
When a dictatorship demanded obedience, conformity, and exclusion, Anna Essinger answered by preserving a school built on almost exactly the opposite values.
Related Reading
- Alice Freeman Palmer, Pioneer of Women’s Education
- Mary Bunting, Champion of Women’s Education
- Fe del Mundo, first female student at Harvard Medical School
- 3 Groundbreaking Women Who Paved the Way in British Education
- The Spy Who Wore Red: Josephine Baker
Sources & References
- Bergas, Hanna. Fifteen Years: Lived Among, With and For Refugee Children. Palo Alto, 1979.
- Cadbury, Deborah. The School That Escaped the Nazis. New York: PublicAffairs, 2022.
- Essinger, Anna. “Die Bunce Court School (1933–1943).” In Hildegard Feidel-Mertz, ed., Schulen im Exil: Die verdrängte Pädagogik nach 1933. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1983, 71–88.
- Giebeler, Sara. “Das Landschulheim Herrlingen – gegründet von Anna Essinger.” In Profile jüdischer Pädagoginnen und Pädagogen. Ulm: Klemm & Oelschläger, 2000, 40–74.
- Association of Jewish Refugees. Refugee Voices: Bunce Court School. Oral-history archive.
Keri is a blogger and digital marketing professional who founded Amazing Women In History in 2011.
Leave a Reply