The Ickinger Gymnasium is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.
Our newspaper is taking this anniversary as an opportunity to take a look at the eventful history of the educational institution, which was founded as a middle school in 1921, at random.
Today: Founder and first headmaster Alfred Vogel.
Icking - Icking grammar school has seen eleven headmasters in its 100-year history so far.
Stefan Nirschl, who took over the job from his predecessor Astrid Barbeau, one of only two directors, has been in office since spring 2021.
Progressive educator
The school was headed by two educators for the longest time: Alfred Vogel founded the educational institution in 1921, known as the mouse class, between elementary school and grammar school. He worked there until 1942. Walter Niklas was in office even longer. He “ruled”, as one almost has to say, the school from 1949, the year in which it became a grammar school, until 1974. He was considered extremely authoritarian and was feared in part by the students. Alfred Vogel, on the other hand, was considered a progressive pedagogue at the time. He didn't think much of using the cane - quite common at the time. He would much rather encourage the talents of his students, as his son, who is also called Alfred Vogel, found his father's diary. Vogel senior enjoyed going to the theater with his protégés on the Isar Valley Railway to Munich,and he also founded an orchestra. How much the speeches he gave in the 1930s, which were quite folkish in character, also reflected his inner attitude, is difficult to judge in retrospect. Unfortunately, he stopped keeping a diary in 1927.
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That, too, used to be part of school life in Ickingen: pupils and teachers played croquet together.
Here teacher Elsa L Bäumen with the student Paul Schönfeldt in Holzen.
© Municipal archive
In any case, it is certain that Vogel was an extremely hardworking man.
The school management in Icking wasn't the only job he did.
At the same time, he worked as a private tutor in Erich Benjamin's children's sanatorium in Ebenhausen - and “whatever time was left he spent on completing his doctoral thesis,” reported his later successors Astrid Barbeau and Stefan Nirschl in their jointly written article in the Chronicle.
Alfred Vogel came from Dresden
Vogel was originally from Dresden, was born in 1877. For health reasons, he first traveled to Italy after completing his studies. The route to the Isar Valley led him to a recommendation from friends.
At first he lived on the right bank of the Isar, so that he always had to walk for an hour and a half to get to work.
Vogel taught Latin and German, but could also speak French.
His son, who was only five years old when his father died, says of him: "He was a fundamental humanist."
Boys and girls were taught together
Icking's archivist Peter Schweiger also says that under Vogel there was a special, modern spirit in the school.
Which also reflected the mood in the Isar Valley, which was carried by local artists and summer visitors who soon made regular pilgrimages to the Isar Valley from Munich.
It was also "unusually progressive", as the chronicle says, that boys and girls were taught together in higher education from the start.
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Also read: Nazi period at Icking grammar school: Völkisch education under the swastika
By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Wolfratshausen-Geretsried newsletter.
