Archives 1947-1948
2nd year of the school’s existence
On Monday, September 6, 1947, a new American high school opened. It was the second year for a U.S. Army dependents high school to be in the Nürnberg, Germany, area, but it was the first year for a school that would be known as Nürnberg American High School.
The dependents school had begun in the fall of 1946 in Erlangen, a small town approximately 15.5 miles north of Nürnberg. But the address of the school opening in the fall of 1947 was 19 Tannenstrasse in Fürth/Bayern, a two approximately 6.5 miles from the Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof.
The doors of NAHS were to remain open for 49 years until the school closed in 1995. In that year thousands of Nürnberg High School alumni had to face the fact that their school was gone. But it lived on in their memory, and these alumni have bonded together to preserve their high school friendships and their memories through the Nürnberg Alumni Association.
This electronic archive of the 1947-48 school year is an attempt to preserve the history and memories of the second class. In the files that you can link to from this page, you can read how these students adjusted to the new school which one NHS student, who had been a student in Erlangen, said was “pretty modern, not far from Nürnberg or the dorms. It’s in Fürth but it’s called Nürnberg High School.”
Here you can see the students immediately and enthusiastically starting up typical activities of high schools in the States. They establish two school newspapers, one for the junior high and another for the high school. They struggle to build competitive sports teams. They relate to the defeated German populace. They initiate extra-curricular activities. They and their teachers work with limited teaching materials. You will see them coping with living in a foreign community and the lack of so many things they were used to in America, and, amazingly enough, finding it all an exhilarating experience, one they would remember a lifetime.
If you find anything here that you believe to be historically inaccurate or know of something that can be added to these files, please contact me.
Bob McQuitty, NAA historian/archivist