In May 1926, Anna Essinger opened a progressive co-educational boarding school at Ulm in Germany. When Hitler came to power in 1933, she realised that the new regime was opposed to everything she stood for and, writes Deborah Cadbury, “resolved to move her entire establishment, lock, stock and barrel, out of Germany, right under the noses of the Nazi authorities”.
So Essinger set off with “an advance party of six teachers and six senior boys and girls to make preparations in England for the arrival of the others. Sixty-five children would follow two weeks later.” To ensure secrecy, each of the three separate groups “masquerad[ed] as day trippers on a picnic with a member of staff”.
