Liebfrauenstraße

The long road to the “denominationally mixed school”

If there were several denominations living in a town in the 18th century, there were also several elementary schools: in Kirchheimbolanden there was a Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic school. There was also a Jewish school. In the case of the Lutheran school, there were even two locations, one for boys and one for girls. In addition, there was also a secondary school (“Latin School”) founded in 1681 [Standort 27] and, from 1846, a “Higher Private Daughters’ School”.

The Catholic elementary school originated in the immediate vicinity of the Liebfrauenkirche church [Standort 14] in what is now Liebfrauenstraße. However, as the town map from 1759 shows, there were no buildings here – opposite the Kirchheimbolander cemetery at the time – in the middle of the 18th century. It was not built until the 1760s.

The Lutheran and Reformed elementary schools were also located in the neighborhood of the two Protestant churches (Mozartstraße 10/12, Amtsstraße 1 and 7) [locations 18, 30], because the teaching content was once very strongly denominationally determined.

The fact that the denominational pattern of thought in the primary school sector then dissolved in the 19th century was, among other things, a consequence of economic development.

In Kirchheimbolanden, this led to a denominationally mixed communal school in 1872.