I would like to make a gift of a picture. It is a picture of the patron saint of the school in Manderfeld: Clara Viebig, who lived from 1860 to 1952. Over the course of the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of her birth, the school community has dealt with her in greater detail than usual. After all, the Eifel poet had successfully solicited financial support for the construction of a hospital in Manderfeld in 1904 with her naturalistic sketch ‘Auf dem Rosengarten’ (On the Rose Garden). The fathers of the large municipality thanked her in autumn 1982 by officially naming the new, centralised school after her.
The educational landscape in this easternmost corner of Belgium was more complex before the 1980s than it is today. In addition to the primary school in Manderfeld, there were five tiny schools in surrounding villages. Since 1969, the state had also organised its own municipal school in the village centre. A local school struggle soon broke out: first the surrounding small schools ran out of pupils, then the large community of Büllingen planned a ‘central school’.
In 1982, anxious to restore the peace, school councillor Gerhard Palm expressed the wish that ‘the two existing school systems in Manderfeld (state school and community school) should converge in the long term and be placed under the responsibility of the community in the not all too distant future’.
However, a merger only became conceivable after the German-speaking Community became responsible for education in 1989. The merger took place in 1991. As logical and sensible as to grow together from the 1991/92 school year onwards, everyday school life was never easy, and the school merger remained an experiment that lasted for many years. In this field, the initiators did not lack courage or foresight, but experience.
After all, the Clara-Viebig-Schule (CVS), which had grown into a large school, granted and demanded transparency: on the outside, a view of a picturesque Eifel landscape, on the inside, classrooms and workshops with one side open. Those who taught, studied and worked here agreed on a set of house rules.
The decisive test came unexpectedly, namely when the Saint Elisabeth House became a reception centre for asylum seekers. The municipality provided accommodation for them in the school. The first four children arrived at the beginning of October 2001.
The fact that the refugee children in Manderfeld experienced the project days of the school patroness Clara Viebig within the school community had long been the norm by 2010/11. It was at that time that the portrait of the writer was created, which has now found its place here.
The building sketched out and asked for in On the Rose Garden novel in 1904 still stands. For almost 20 years, the Red Cross of the Asylum Seekers’ Centre and the teachers of the Clara Viebig School have created new opportunities and perspectives for far more than 500 refugee children –in East Belgium, too.
Alfred Rauw
Mürringen