Paulina still shivers just thinking about the winter months in her classroom. The tenth grader spent most of the day in a basement room at the Willi-Graf-Gymnasium in Schwabing, at ten to twelve degrees and with the windows open due to the corona. And with her the entire high school. It was “very cold,” says Paulina. “Because the heating often didn’t work.” In the meantime, thanks to the advanced season, it is no longer so icy in the rooms. But the lessons down there are still not pleasant. There is a lack of daylight, which affects the mood and motivation, as Spanish and English teacher Max Schleier knows. And the air is “very stuffy,” says Paulina’s classmate Fabio.
“Kellerkinder” is what the upper school students are called internally. Because some of them are already being taught in their second year of school in an “environment that is not conducive to health”, as the school management and parents’ council criticize. For a long time, children and parents, says director Dominik Blanz, “showed an admirably high level of endurance and perseverance.” In order to enable face-to-face teaching again, they would have “swallowed these big toads”. But that is over now. The Parents’ Council has reached out to the public. Chairman Daniel Schmidt complains that the current situation is “hardly tolerable”. The grammar school needs “simply enough space” to be able to “still be able to school the students in at least manageable conditions” until the planned campus renovation in a few years. Because the fact is: The municipal school located at Luitpoldpark is bursting at the seams.
“At the moment,” says Blanz, “we don’t have the space for four to five classes.” In the future, eight to ten additional rooms will be needed. The reason for this is the run to high school. The school in the immediate vicinity of Scheidplatz, which a few years earlier was still struggling with its image due to the appearance of swastikas and fights as a result of racist ideas, is now very popular. Today the words “School without Racism – School with Courage” are emblazoned in large letters above the main entrance. Inside, this credo for a colorful and open school continues visually – with handprints that shine in many colors from the walls in the stairwell. This openness is also lived in everyday school life. Dominik Blanz greets every student, every teacher and every visitor with a friendly “Hello”. Appreciative cooperation is important to the headmaster of “Willi”: When he agreed to take on the post of headmaster in 2019, he did so with the aim of promoting this welcoming culture.
The school has eight fifth graders – more than any other
There is now an annual theme week at the Willi-Graf-Gymnasium on questions of tolerance and diversity. There are campaigns by the “School without Racism” group, for example fifth graders are given a chocolate bar with a section of human rights on the back as a welcome gift. In addition, since 2019, the Willi Graf Prize has been awarded every year to people or groups from the school family who have worked particularly hard for human dignity and civil courage as well as against discrimination. In keeping with the school’s namesake, a “White Rose” fighter who was executed for his resistance to the Nazi regime.
The school management and parents’ council would be happy to make this atmosphere possible for anyone who wants it. Alone – with the current room situation, the “Willi” cannot do justice to the current rush. Last summer, the Schwabing school accepted 242 students and thus formed eight fifth grades, according to Blanz more than any other high school in Munich. At the most recent information evening for the fifth graders, record numbers were again reported: 400 interested parties came. “But I definitely can’t take in more than 180 children,” regrets Blanz. He is constantly in the process of rejecting requests – with “dramas” that then took place.
After all, there will be six new classes in September. “Two more than reason would tell us.” The sports and open spaces are also cramped. In addition to the “Willi” and the Sophie-Scholl-Gymnasium, a girls’ school, the campus has also had a branch of the Ricarda-Huch-Realschule since the 2016/17 school year – together around 2000 students. The headquarters of the Realschule is on Wilhelmstrasse near the Münchner Freiheit, but there are only ten classes there – also because of a lack of space. All others, fifth and sixth graders and the commercial branch, use a pavilion in the inner courtyard of the campus on Borschtallee. Especially during the breaks, says Blanz, there is always “friction” between the children. Also because young people had forgotten how to interact socially during the Corona period. “In doing so,” emphasizes the director, “we expressly support the cooperation of the schools”. The school management had a very good relationship.
The Willi-Graf-Gymnasium (right) shares the campus with the Ricarda-Huch-Realschule (left). In the meantime, everything has become too small, as Headmaster Dominik Blanz (left) and Parents’ Council Daniel Schmidt know.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
This is also confirmed by the rector of the secondary school, Karina Medvei. “But,” says Blanz, “the learning situation just has to be right.” For Blanz and the parents’ council chairman Schmidt, a solution could now be to accommodate the upper level of the Willi-Graf-Gymnasium in the containers that now house the secondary school. But where then with the eight classes of the Ricarda-Huch-Realschule? No idea, says Rector Medvei. There is no real alternative to the status quo in the densely built-up inner city. The secondary school cannot go back to the main building, the space is occupied by the elementary school there. And that has priority as a parish school.
So a second location is needed – which must also be accessible, since both the children and the teachers for subjects such as physical education and technical classes commute. “There are 23 secondary schools in Munich, and they’re all packed,” says Medvei. In the long term, the Realschule is to move completely to the campus area between Borschtallee, Karl-Theodor-Strasse and Belgradstrasse. It is “planned to revise the plans for the entire site and to build new buildings,” explains the spokesman for the city’s department for education and sports, Andreas Haas. In the course of this, they also intend to expand the Willi-Graf-Gymnasium. The project is to be tackled “promptly”.