Abingdonian 2017

24 The Abingdonian German Exchange A language exchange between two schools is a common occurrence today; this was not so in 1967, least of all between schools in England and Germany where animosities and suspicions caused by the war still lingered. This means that from the start the Abingdon-Bielefeld exchange was something special. The story began in August 1966 when James Cobban, headmaster 1947-1970, picked up two German hitchhikers on Boars Hill and invited them to have lunch at Lacies Court. Cobban knew Germany: he had been a colonel in the Intelligence Corps at the end of the war, involved in the Allied Control Commission. His work had taken him to Bielefeld so he knew how badly damaged the town had been by allied bombers. Over lunch one of the hitchhikers, Alexander Potthoff, talked about his school, the Ratsgymnasium Bielefeld. As he did so an idea formed in Cobban’s mind. Writing in 1987 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the exchange, he recalled: “I had long had at the back of my mind the idea that if we could build up a connection with a comparable school in Germany … it might make some contribution, however small, to the strengthening of ties between the two countries.” The next year the exchange began and immediately the pupils found they had much in common. Neil Coulbec, who went to Bielefeld in 1969, reported in The Abingdonian : “Our interests and views took the same direction whether it was a question of pop music, the Common Market, student representation (of great concern to them), war, or what to do in the evenings”. However, the fact that pupils were allowed to smoke at school, even if only outside the main school doors, came as a bit of a surprise. It wasn’t just pupils that had much in common. Michael St John Parker, headmaster 1975-2001, also writing in 1987, observed that both schools shared not only a concern with rigorous academic standards but also for the quality of their pupils’ lives, and both “are proud upholders of the great European tradition of liberal education which goes back through the period of Enlightenment to the Renaissance and even to the Middle Ages”. The format of the exchange has varied over the years. Initially only the senior Bielefeld class came and the ages of the original contingent from Abingdon ranged from 13 to 17. Now the exchange is conducted in the fourth year. In the early years it was a biennial exchange, now it takes place every year. Originally the Ratsgymnasium was a boys’ school, like Abingdon. However, once it went co-ed in the 1970s the exchange was expanded to include the girls of St Helen and St Katharine’s. In 1979 Gideon Franklyn spent a whole term at the Ratsgymnasium remarking on the early starts, the absence of uniform, the presence of girls and that there was less of a sense of community. This was something picked up by Vark Heinrich Helfritz when he spent a year at Abingdon 1984-5. He felt very much that German schools were somewhere where you did your lessons whereas in England there was a strong feeling of belonging. Staff took part in exchanges too. In 1986 Otto Steinsiek and Nick Revill exchanged places for a term: Otto Steinsiek found it frustrating that learning and teaching were so geared to exams. Nick Revill appreciated the fact that the status of English as an international language gave his pupils a very positive attitude towards the subject. Fifty years is a long time and much has changed. In 1971 a visit was made to Goslar where “the frontier with East