GERMANY’S ODENWALD progressive school has vowed to continue investigating widespread abuse at the school despite the death of the former headmaster accused of abusing at least 17 pupils.
Gerold Becker was a leading light in Germany’s reform education movement and was headmaster of Odenwald from 1972 to 1985. In March, his pedagogical concept of placing students in a “family” with one of their teachers was exposed as a front for abuse.
“The rigorous investigation into the Odenwald past goes on regardless,” said Mr Johannes von Dohnanyi, board spokesman for the school, near Frankfurt. “We are very sorry that Mr Becker died so early and didn’t have more time to answer pressing questions.”
Mr Becker, who died aged 73 after a long illness, wrote a general letter of apology to students last March.
Though the statute of limitations has expired on the abuse cases, 50 at last count, an independent “truth commission” has been established to continue the investigation.
A ceremony at the weekend to mark the 100th anniversary of the school turned into a heated confrontation between former pupils and a handful of staff present.
Dozens of pupils recounted how Becker woke them each morning by slipping his hand beneath their bed clothes and stimulating their genitals.
“Becker tried it on every day then went on to give ethics lessons,” said one former pupil. “Every day began with fear and the thought, ‘again today I won’t imagine to escape the humiliation’.” One former pupil said he was attacked by school figures for trying to draw attention to Becker’s abuse record, going back to 1998. Only a handful of teachers attended. One former teacher, Salman Ansari, apologised to ex-students. “We argued constantly about education ideology and were more interested in ourselves than in the children.”