From Bastions to Models: Deutsche Schulen in Den Niederlanden as Tools of German Cultural Policy

ABSTRACT Successive German governments in the twentieth century used the system of German International Schools to achieve their cultural policy goals in the Netherlands. Prior to the Nazi assumption of power, the Weimar government and local German community leaders in the Netherlands saw the schools as bastions of German culture and as tools to prevent the ‘Dutchification’ of Germans living abroad. With Hitler’s accession to the Chancellorship, the purpose of these schools changed to include the inculcation of a National Socialist and Germanic worldview among the students. Finally, with the German occupation during the Second World War, these schools, which the Nazi occupiers significantly expanded, were seen as models for the future development of Dutch education. Although the ultimate Nazi defeat limited the effect of these German International Schools upon the larger Dutch educational establishment, the changes the German Schools underwent in the 1930s were largely mirrored by Dutch institutions during the occupation. The German International Schools therefore stand as further evidence of the Nazis’ larger designs for the Netherlands after the hoped-for German victory.