page_title: Anna Essinger
section_title: Legacy and honours
hierarchical_section_title: Anna Essinger / Legacy and honours
caption_attribution_description: Commemorative plaque in Ulm, Germany for Anna Essinger, educator and founder of Bunce Court school. Deutsch: Gedenkstele Frauen der Ulmer Stadtgeschichte – Anna Essinger 15.9.1879 Ulm – 30.5.1960 Bunce Court Die Pädagogin Anna Essinger wurde hier geboren. Nach einem USA Aufenthalt gründete sie 1926 in Herrlingen das erste reformpädagogische Landschulheim Württembergs. 1933 emigrierte sie mit ihren Schülern nach England. Dort wurde ihre Schule Heimat für verfolgte Kinder, besonders nach den Novemberpogromen 1938. Mit ihren Schwestern Paula und Bertha arbeitete sie „an einer Welt, in der waches geistiges Leben, gegenseitige Achtung und Verantwortlichkeit für die Gemeinschaft höher bewertet wird als aller Besitz.” Als sie 1948 ihre Schule schloss, hatten über 900 Kinder in Herrlingen und Bunce Court Zuflucht und Geborgenheit gefunden. Stadt Ulm English: Commemorative plaque reads: Women in the history of the City of Ulm – Anna Essinger September 15, 1879 Ulm – May 30, 1960 Bunce Court Educator Anna Essinger was born here. After a stay in the U.S., she founded Württemberg's first progressive educational boarding school in 1926. In 1933, she emigrated to England with her pupils. There, her school became a home for persecuted children, especially after "The Night of Broken Glass" in 1938. With her sisters Paula and Bertha, she worked "on a world, in which alert, spiritual life, mutual respect and responsibility for the community is valued more than all possessions. As she close her school in 1948, more than 900 children had found refuge and comfort in Herrlingen and Bunce Court. City of Ulm
context_page_description: 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 Anna, or TA, for short. She remained in close contact with her former pupils for the rest of her life.
context_section_description: Many of Essinger's pupils went on to distinguished careers, including Frank Auerbach, Leslie Brent, Gerard Hoffnung, Frank Marcus, Peter Morley, and Helmut and Richard Sonnenfeldt. Bunce Court alumni returned at every opportunity while the school was still in existence; after it closed, they held reunions for 55 years.
  In 1959, in honour of Essinger's 80th birthday, Bunce Court alumni planted a grove of trees in Israel that was named after her.
  In 1990, a realschule in Ulm and a Kuhberg gymnasium (secondary school) were named for Anna Essinger. Some of her personal papers are archived at the Ida Seele Archive in Dillingen an der Donau. The archive is devoted to research of the history of education and social pedagogy. In July 2007, the original Bunce Court school bell was retrieved from California, where it had been saved and stored by Ernst Weinberg, a former pupil, and was reinstalled on top of the schoolhouse. A plaque honoring Essinger and the school was erected at the same time.
  In 2004, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography added an entry for Essinger, unusual for someone who became a naturalized British citizen late in life. Also in 2004, the city of Ulm celebrated its 1,150th anniversary and along with it, the birthdays of Anna Essinger and Albert Einstein, both born there. The celebration for Essinger lasted a week and was attended by family members from the United Kingdom and Israel, as well as Germany; and former students.
caption: Commemorative plaque for Anna Essinger in downtown Ulm
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