Founder of Warburg Grammar School and donor of a book of gospels – a great doer of good deeds

The school called “Gymnasium Marianum” in Warburg – next to Paderborn grammar school the oldest high school in the earlier Paderborn upper part of diocese – has existed for more than 360 years. It was founded in 1628 as the monastery school. The foundation of this first public high school was made possible by the donation of Heinrich Thöne in 1619, by securing the maintenance payments for the teachers required. The town of Warburg, which had a great interest in the foundation and the prompt beginning of school, did not have the financial means necessary to settle the personnel costs in this time of the Thirty Years War. As a border town between Paderborn and the Protestant territories in Hesse, Warburg suffered again and again from plunder, destruction, billeting and having to make contributions and thus a burden of debt that lasted decades after the war. In no way in these decades did Warburg have the financial means required for the foundation and securing of a high school.

Heinrich Thöne came from Warburg, in 1566 he was born the eldest of five sons from the first marriage of the councillor and chamberlain in the old town Johann VI. Thöne (brother of Martin Thonemann, the Abbot of Hardehausen) to Gertrud, née Volmar – both from rich patrician families. Gertrud Volmar was the sister of Mayor Cord Volmar, whose two brothers were university professors in Mainz. Their mother Angela was the heir of the mayoral family von Listingen, daughter and sister of a mayor and also sister of the provost of Fritzlar and deacon of St Stephan in Mainz, Johann von Listingen. Heinrich Thöne’s grandfather was Johann V. Heinrich Thone, called Thonemann, the direct ancestor of our family.

In 1619 Heinrich Thöne was cantor and canon at St. Viktor in Mainz, an Augustinian chapter of the canons. He donated his home town of Warburg capital of 2000 Reichstaler with the obligation that for the 100 Taler annual interest a high school should be maintained with three classes at first (Infirma, Secunda, Syntaxis). Heinrich Thöne had lent this amount of 2000 Reichstaler to the archbishop of Mainz as a contribution to the costs of the Böhmisch-Pfälzisch war. The document of foundation of 1619 expressly stipulated that the Council of the town of Warburg use the interest amount of 100 Taler for the payment of teachers, also that the educational tasks be transferred to the Dominican order in Warburg.

The school was opened in 1628 after General Erwitte, commander of the allied troops, in Warburg again, had donated another 50 Reichstaler (document of 10 April 1628).

In keeping with the purpose of the foundation, the new school was to serve the “better education of the boys studying and to be set up in the monastery.

The foundation of a high school did not only correspond to a need among the citizenry, to make a better and continuing education possible for young people in Warburg; it was also under the banner of the counterreformation and was initiated by the founder in this sense. In his will Heinrich Thöne assumed that the Catholic faith would last in his home town or that a re-catholicisation would be successful.

The exact wording of the foundation document on the background of the foundation: “so that in Warburg, at this stage purged from heretics, is reformed and Catholic, the more bass teachers to their virtue here”.

He connected the annual payment of 100 Taler to “the mayor, council and the whole community of both towns” even with the condition: “as long as they remain Catholic”.

The school was expanded to a full five-class institution 15 years later in 1643. For this the town of Warburg committed itself to the Dominicans to pay the nine extra teachers 30 Taler annually and promised a later topping up of 10 Taler in better times. The additional classes were called “Poetica” and “Rhetorica”. The school was called “Gymnasium Marianum” after the church “b. Mariae Virgines in vinea”, a Dominican church.

The management of the school was in the hands of a “Pater Praefektus” (Director), who supervised the entire tuition and was responsible to the prior of the monastery. A superior school supervision did not yet exist. In so far as the number of pupils made it possible, one teacher taught in each class and indeed all subjects. The teachers, who were called “Professores” were scientifically educated at the high schools of the orders. However they were not equipped with any special pedagogical preparatory training. When they had taught all five classes, they were mostly called away to do other duties.

The school lessons were free; however the pupils had to pay a certain amount for the schoolbooks in which the lessons for the subjects of a class were compiled.

The pupils came without exception from Warburg and the neighbouring places. Many of the pupils who did not intend pursuing the academic professions later, attended only the lower three classes. Some school-leavers after five years school attendance entered the Dominican order; the majority turned to university studies.

Johann Conrad Schlaun, born in Nörde near Warburg in 1695, was one of the most famous pupils or A-level students of this Warburg monastery school. He was a great builder of famous castles, worked in Italy and France, Southern Germany and from 1723 in Münster/Westphalia. There in 1745 he became head building director and major-general. He brought the Westphalian baroque through strong, imaginative penetration of the indigenous brick and stone construction with western classicism to a significant late blossoming. His versatile castle and residential building art peaked in Erbdrostenhof (1753 to 1757) and the Residenzschloss in Münster (1767 to 1773); Clemenskirche (1745 to 1753) built by him in Münster is the most imaginative building in North-west Germany. Schlaun is well-known in our home as a result of the beautiful buildings in Münster, especially Jagdschloss Clemenswerth (1736 to 1750). This great artistic builder Johann Conrad Schlaun has passed on lots of other excellent buildings to posterity.

The Warburg Dominican school ended in this form because the Dominican monastery in Warburg was finally dissolved by the royal-Prussian cabinet order of 31 December 1824. In an altered form as a Progymnasium, the school was eventually continued. The citizens and administration of Warburg made numerous petitions and applications to the Prussian school authorities as they did not want to do without the 200-year tradition of school education of the children of Warburg.

In a review of the many school years it is astonishing to note the idealism, spirit of sacrifice and great enthusiasm for educational matters, with which both town and citizens stood up for their school.

Heinrich Thöne attended the famous Jesuit grammar school in Mainz and later studied at the universities in Mainz and Cologne and did his doctorate in 1585 in the fine arts. He became a Benefiziat (user of property in return for services) in Warburg and Neuenherse and Kanonikus (member of an order) in Hildesheim and Mainz, also cantor (precentor, head of the school) and finally Kurmainzer privy councillor. Certainly family tradition and family relationships had led him to Mainz, to this bishop’s city, as his great uncle Cord IV Thöne had been prior at St. Stephan in Mainz and the brother of his mother, the privy councillor Dr. Heinrich Volmar was generally known and esteemed here.

Thus he received as the nephew of this prelate the same position his uncle had held shortly after the latter’s death. In 1621 as scholar at St. Victor’s he took over the office of master of the novices among the future canons and was, at the same time, librarian of the canon. Without a doubt the right bibliophile was found in him, as on the occasion of his appointment he donated a book of gospels, a work that is still one of the treasures of the cathedral of Mainz. Today (1994) it is a 600 year-old parchment, done by hand in 1400, rich with initials and margins and which the donor Thöne/Thonemann had bound with a splendid silver-golden binding by a goldsmith. On the front of the binding of the parchment document there is a golden crucifixion group with Jesus, Mary and John in a cassette-like inlay, as well as two angels with goblets in massive, graphic figures in a baroque frame. On the inside of the front cover is: “Ad gloriam Dei Optimi Maximi et suorum sanctorum Evangeliorum ego Henricus Thönen Warburgensis Westfalicus, cantor et canonicus St Victoris, hunc librum exterius exornari feci anno Dn 1621”.

Description of the book of gospels of Dr. Heinrich Thöne (Thonemann), Cantor and Canon of St. Viktor (1621). This partly dates from the 15th century.