Archives 1948-1949
3rd year of the school’s existence
On Monday, October 21, 1946, a new American high school opened. It was one of six high schools that opened in the fall of 1946, not in the United States, but in Erlangen, Germany, a small town approximately 15.5 miles north of Nürnberg, one of the most historic German cities. This school was named Erlangen American High School.
On Monday, September 21, 1947, this school opened its doors as Nürnberg American High School in a new location, 19 Tannenstrasse in Fürth, a town approximately 6.5 miles from the Nürnberg Hauptbahnhof.
In the fall of 1948, NAHS began its second year in the building at 19 Tannenstrasse and its third year as an Army dependent school.
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 class of 1948-49 is an attempt to preserve the history and memories of the third class. In the files that you can link to from this page, you can read how these students adjusted to a small American high school tucked away in a corner of Fürth, Germany, while the Germans were digging out of the rubble of their destroyed cities, and the Cold War, as manifested in the Berlin Air Lift, was already underway.
Here you can see the students engaged in the typical activities of high schools in the States. Their school newspaper is now in its third year. They combine with other dependent high schools to publish their first “real” yearbook. With few students, they compete manfully in football and basketball. They engage in extra-curricular activities. They and their teachers work with limited teaching materials. They attempt to relate to the defeated German populace, but the situation is tense. One member of the Class of 1948-49 summed up their experience in this way: “We dependent students were rowdy, independent American elite. We were the “Winners,” self-assured, and probably totally obnoxious to the adult Germans.”
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