School Histories

Nürnberg HS (formerly Erlangen HS) History

Opened: 1946
Closed: 1995

Located in the city of Erlangen for its first year and thus known as Erlangen High School, this school for dependents of high school age in the Nürnberg area was one of the original six DoDDS high schools in Germany. It opened in October 1946 in a former private residence. The school opened a year and a half after the Allied forces defeated the German Third Reich. The freshmen met in the dining room, the sophomores in the living room, and the juniors and seniors had classes upstairs in the bedrooms. Approximately seventy students were enrolled. After Thanksgiving of that year, classes were moved into the science building at Erlangen University. The school had a faculty of eight and a teaching principal.

During that first school year, the students wrote a constitution to establish a student council that could begin planning school activities. In January, they began a student newspaper and at the end of the year published a 10-page mimeographed yearbook. Basketball and baseball were the school sports. In the spring, some students had the unique experience of witnessing sessions of the Nürnberg Military Tribunals for Nazi war crimes. In June, students were given a cruise down the Rhine River, an event given to all five of the high schools in Germany. This tradition continued for several years.

Eight Erlangen High School seniors graduated in July 1947 in a combined ceremony with Munich High School at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

In the fall of 1947, the school moved to 19 Tannenstrasse in Fürth, Germany, a town approximately 6.5 miles from the Nürnberg main railway station, and changed the name to Nürnberg American High School. A former German girls’ school built in 1906, the building had a gymnasium, a larger assembly room, a dining hall, and a combination library/study hall. There was also a large basement. Three-story, private homes were requisitioned to serve as dormitories. Other facilities available to the students were the Fürth Opera Haus which housed the Teenage Club, an ice skating and swimming facility built by Nazi Germany for the 1936 Olympics, and the Stein Castle requisitioned from the Faber-Castell family. It became the location for the Junior–Senior Prom.

Approximately seventy students in grades 9–12 were enrolled in the school. In June of the second year (1948), only four seniors graduated at the Haus der Kunst. During the next three years, enrollment was approximately 100 students.

Dormitory accommodations were provided for students whose parents were stationed farther away from the Nürnberg area. The first dormitory opened in Erlangen. Later, the second dormitory opened in Fürth. At one point the dormitory housed approximately ninety students. A new wing was added to accommodate sixteen of those students. The students wrote a constitution for the student council, organized student assemblies, and held several dances.

Classes remained there until a new building was completed in January 1952. On January 3, 1952, a new school building was opened at 30 Fronmüllerstrasse with an adjacent dormitory. By 1995, five new buildings were added to the school campus, including a new gymnasium. During the first decade of its existence, Nürnberg High School had an average enrollment of about 120 students and an average of nineteen student graduates. In the 1956-57 school year, enrollment topped 200 students for the first time (207) and there were twenty-seven graduates. One year later the enrollment had increased to 312 students. This building was the school’s final location.

For the first few years, the high school’s sports teams were known as the Tigers, and the school colors were red and white. The colors were changed to green and white when red jerseys for the new football team were unavailable, but green jerseys were. In the 1949-50 school year, the team mascot was changed to the Eagles, seemingly appropriate because an eagle appears on the crest of the city of Nürnberg.

The Nürnberg Alma Mater known to the majority of the school’s students is the one that was adopted in 1954 and remained as such until the closing of the school in 1995:

Hail, oh hail to dear old Nürnberg.

Now we honor thee.

Loyal friends of thee forever,

Faithful we will be,

Toiling, striving, never ceasing,

Looking toward the sky.

Hail to thee our alma mater,

Hail to Nürnberg High!

From the first year of the high school until 1983, the school had a dormitory. For the 1948-49 school year, there were twenty boys in the dorm and fifteen girls. New dormitories replaced the original dorms for the 1951-52 school year. By the 1960s, students in the dorms came from the communities of Amberg, Bamberg, Bindlach, Crailsheim, Grafenwöhr, Hof, Hohenfels, Illesheim, Schwäbisch Hall, and Vilseck. There were sixty-eight students in the dorm for the 1977-78 school year.

Students participated in a number of clubs and activities. The first year the school had a newspaper, Army Brat, as well as a chorus, debate club, and drama club. The first years of the school sports included a six-man football team and basketball as well as a rifle club and bowling club. By the mid-fifties, the music program included several choruses including a Glee Club.

The school newspaper became the Trichter and retained that name. For the 1977-78 school year, the first junior high newspaper, Eaglette, was published. The first school yearbook, Voyager, was published for the 1947-48 school year and was part of the combined yearbook for Europe. The school had its first solo yearbook for the 1960-61 school year.

Throughout the years, Nürnberg had many extracurricular activities. These included student council, band, letterman’s club, homemaking club, and foreign language clubs. Several clubs were established to reflect special student interests such as the engineering club, slide rule club, Saturday radio program, majorettes, pep club, Afro-American Club, Club Beyond, Human Relations, and Teen Involvement.

School honors included:

• 1952-53 – Six-man Football Championship
• 1961-62 – Class B Football Champs, Track Southern Regional Champs, Basketball tied for Class A Champs
• 1965-66 – Football, Class B Red Division Champs
• 1968 Music Festival held at Fürth Opera House. The festival included bands and choruses from Munich, Augsburg, Würzburg, and Nürnberg.
• 1971-72 – The football team won its first homecoming in seven years and tied for the Red Division Championship
• 1972-73 – Women had traveling teams for golf, basketball, tennis, and gymnastics
• 1973-74 – JROTC program began at the school
• 1984-85 – JROTC program won the honor as “Best in DoDDS”
• 1986-87 – First cheerleaders for wrestling
• 1987-88 – The wrestling team had a thirty-four-game winning streak
• June 8, 1989 was “Coach Smith Day”. The athletic field was named after long time coach and teacher, Don Smith.
• 1989-90 – Gymnastics team took first place in Europe.

For the 1990-91 school year, the seventh and eighth grades at the high school became a middle school incorporating middle school concepts and philosophies in its schedule and teaching practices. The middle school mascot became the Knight, and the middle school published its own yearbook for the 1992-93 school year.

The number of graduating seniors fluctuated greatly over the years, with the highest number having been 180 in 1978. On May 30, 1995, the last thirty-two seniors received their diplomas.  The U.S. military was being withdrawn from the Nürnberg area.

School Administrators:

Information from DoDDS School Information Guides, school yearbooks and Martha Liehsel, historian of Nürnberg Alumni Association