The Polish grammar school in Bytom

After the referendum that sealed the partition of Upper Silesia into Polish and German sections, the Union of Poles in Germany (Związek Polaków w Niemczech)[1] attempted to set up a secondary school on Polish lines in the area of the Reich, providing tuition up to A-level. As early as the 1920s the Polish-Catholic School Society in Opolan Silesia (Polsko-Katolickie Towarzystwo Szkolne dla Śląska Opolskiego), the local section of the Union, had for administrative reasons decided not to pursue its efforts to set up a Polish State Grammar School in the remaining German voting areas, although the Polish minority had been accorded such a right according to the 1922 Geneva Convention. The Committee for Celebrating the 21st Anniversary of the Struggle for a Polish School (Komitet Obchodu 25–lecia Walki o Szkołę Polską) was set up in February 1930 under the patronage of Ignacy Mościcki, the President of the Polish Republic, to mark the 25th anniversary of the first day of the school strike in the Prussian and Russian sectors. One of the primary objectives set by the committee was to begin preparations to set up a private Polish Grammar School in Germany. This would be financed by the Fund of the Union of Poles in Germany and the Polish government. In addition donations were to be collected from the Polish population. These flowed into the newly founded Fund for the Promotion of the Polish School System Abroad (Fundusz Szkolnictwa Polskiego Zagranicą) under the patronage of the then Marshal of the Senate, Władysław Raczkiewicz.[2]

The site of the Grammar School
 

Initially it was an open question as to where the Polish Grammar School should be sited. Both Silesia and Eastern Prussia came into consideration. There were two possible towns in Silesia: Opole and Bytom. Opole was the seat of the district government and the local headquarters of the Union of Poles, the Polish School Society (Polskie Towarzystwo Szkolne) and the Polish Boy Scouts. The fact that Bytom was near the border spoke in its favour. But in the end the decision proved accidental. “Katolik” (The Catholic), a publishing house in Bytom was declared insolvent and it was decided to put its building at the disposal of the Polish Grammar School. On 24th March 1932 the Opole section of the Polish Catholic School Society (Polsko-Katolickie Towarzystwo Szkolne) applied to the Bytom Building Office for its approval to restructure the building for school purposes. The application triggered off a wave of protest in the local press and objections were even sent to the Ministry of the Interior. The German side torpedoed the efforts of the Polish side  by trying to prove that a Polish minority did not exist in Upper Silesia, especially in Bytom.[3]

Nonetheless the application was granted. The comprehensive rebuilding measures caused the initiators of the Bytom school to apply to the Provincial College in Opole for permission to have a classical public Grammar School offering its students the chance of attaining A-levels. Subsequently a special conference was held in Berlin on 9th August 1932. The Ministry of Culture was represented by Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, the Ministry of the Interior by privy counsellor, Gürich, and the Foreign Ministry by the Ministerial Director, Meyer. The Supreme President, Hans Lukaschek, represented the district government of Opole. The upshot was that the application by the Polish side was accepted, along with all the recommended teaching candidates except for the candidate for the post of director, Miłosz Sołtys. This latter decision was made because people considered that the head of the school should be a German citizen in order to ensure that the students would have a correct political outlook. In order to take the sting out of this problem the school counsellor, Dopke, from Bytom was appointed the trustee of the College and given the job of supervising the school. Furthermore people pointed to the name of the school which was officially called the Prywatne Gimnazjum Rozwojowe z polskim językiem nauczania (Private Grammar School under Construction with Lessons in Polish), since the German authorities thought that there was no good reason to set up a school with classes at all levels, i.e. including an A-level class. Originally the intention was to have three lower classes, from class 6 to class 4. And in order to assess the state of knowledge held by the future students in the Grammar School, Germans should carry out examinations before deciding whether or not to open the school.[4]

The three-storey building of the Polish Grammar School was in Kurfürstenstraße 21 (today’s aleja Legionów). It had classrooms for physics, chemistry, biology and drawing as well as an assembly hall, a gymnasium, a chapel and a library equipped with a film projector, a slide projector and a radio.[5]