Anna Essinger

Anna Essinger (15 September 1879 – 30 May 1960) 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 ("Aunt") Anna, or TA, for short. She remained in close contact with her former pupils for the rest of her life.

Early years Essinger was born on Hafengasse ("Harbor Lane") in Ulm, the oldest of six girls and three boys, to a non-observant Jewish couple, Fanny (née Oppenheimer) and Leopold Essinger. Her grandfather was David Essinger (1817–1899), a doctor. Leopold Essinger had an insurance business and served in World War I in Verdun, France. While in the imperial German army, he became convinced that there was widespread antisemitism among the officers. While in Tennessee, she became acquainted with Quakers, becoming deeply impressed and beginning a lifelong association with them. She graduated from college with a degree in German studies, financing her education by teaching German became a teacher and lectured at the university in Madison, Wisconsin. Working with Quaker-sponsored humanitarian aid, she returned to Germany in 1919. Her task was to convince mayors, teachers and school rectors to set up kitchens so that children could have a hot meal once a day. She also collected food and clothing. She ran Landschulheim Herrlingen like a Montessori program, "stout and stern" and as having the children's welfare at heart. She was a strict disciplinarian with both staff and pupils, the children learned to play music. In the evening, Anna Essinger read a story and then gave each child a "good night kiss" before sending them off to bed. A 1927 report by the Ministry of Science, Art and Education (Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Volksbildung) described Essinger as "extremely competent" and her teaching as "skillful, fresh and stimulating". She was denounced within the Nazi Party and the Nazi authorities' attitude toward the school became increasingly negative. It was recommended that an inspector be installed at the school. Essinger, realizing that her school had no future in Germany,

An old manor house dating from the time of Henry VIII was found in the village of Otterden near Faversham, in the County of Kent. The house was large, with extensive grounds, making it ideal for a boarding school. Funds were meager, so work on the property was done by the staff and pupils, causing British education inspectors to view the new school unfavorably at the outset. In 1933, England was still secure and war had not yet broken out and people were not aware of what was going on in Germany and why Essinger and the school had left. The experience of running the reception camp and placing the children was so difficult, that afterward, Essinger refused to talk about it.

In 1940, the school again had to evacuate when southern England became a defence area. Essinger and about 100 children and teachers relocated the school to "Trench Hall" in Shropshire. 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.

Manuscripts Anna Essinger, Goethe and Saint-Simon (1917) HathiTrust Digital Library. Original from the University of Wisconsin.