“Let us set up a small school this way …” (founding father Dieter Derksen)

It all started with private lessons, at first for individuals and then later for small groups of young people who wished to repeat their Abitur (similar to A Levels). When the first three candidates passed their exams, word got round, and more pupils came, teachers were employed and a blackboard was bought … it was the year 1959 and the Kleine private Lehrinstitut Derksen was born. “Let us set up a small school this way” said founding father Dieter Derksen to his wife Barbarina Derksen – but it was not to be called “school” and it was not even to “smell of school”. Lessons continued to be held in the privacy of the couple’s own home and at the beginning they were, above all, for the higher classes. The school grew from the top down so to speak.

60 years later, the Lehrinstitut Derksen is now long since a state-recognized grammar school, a respected institution in the Munich district of Großhadern and well-known far and beyond the Munich city limits.