The Leipzig Cultural Foundation campaigned to save the Old Nikolai School immediately after its establishment in 1990. In October 1990, the city council at the time decided to transfer the school to the Cultural Foundation. Thanks to a ten million mark donation from the city of Frankfurt am Main and Saxon monument funding, the foundation began to carefully renovate the monument from 1991 to 1994 and to put it to cultural and monument-compatible use. The Old Nikolai School was reopened on September 10, 1994. This created a new cultural and historical excursion destination in Leipzig's city center and a well-known restaurant in the city, the "Gasthaus Alte Nikolaischule" in the historic schoolroom - the auditorium. The Old Nikolai School is also the headquarters of the Leipzig Cultural Foundation and, since 1994, the University of Leipzig's Museum of Antiquities.
The history of the Alte Nikolaischule goes back to the end of the 12th century. On March 11, 1395, the councilors of the city of Leipzig were decreed by Pope Boniface IX. authorized to build a city school at Nikolaikirchhof or the surrounding area. At first there was still only one private school, Schola Nikolaitana, which was first mentioned in 1490. The name was transferred as a nickname and later as an official name to the students learning there: the "Nicolaitanians".
Due to the founding of the University of Leipzig in 1409, however, the council did not decide to build the school until March 14, 1498. On September 26, 1510, the council renewed the decision to build the school, so that in 1511 the dilapidated house at Nikolaikirchhof 2 could be bought and demolished together with the neighboring sexton. On December 6, 1512, the day of St. Nicholas, Leipzig's first secular school was inaugurated.
Even after the renovation and extension of the building in 1530, which became necessary due to the increasing number of pupils, only four classrooms were available for boys from the 17th to the 19th century. They were set up on the ground floor and third floor, while the sexton and his family occupied the entire first floor. When evangelical teaching was introduced in Leipzig in 1539, the Nikolai School was reformed.
The school building burned down in 1551 and a new building was erected in 1568, which was redesigned in the Renaissance style in 1596/97. In 1611 the Nikolaischule was a six-class Latin school, and it was not until 1716 that training in German was included in the school regulations. During this period, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, considered the last universal genius, was a Nicolaitan from 1655 to 1661.
Complex Old Nikolai School (1875)
From left: commercial building (ground floor only), Nikolai school, priests' houses
A school auditorium and the prison, which had been completely absent up to that point, were only available after the upper floors of the neighboring corner house were annexed in 1824–1827. The later composer Richard Wagner received music lessons in the “Redesaal” (Aula) of the school, which was built on the second floor of this house in the late Classicist illusionistic style. This probably the most beautiful room in the house was reconstructed in 1994 in keeping with the style and now offers space for 100 people for events.
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Source: Wikipedia
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