History
The original school was established on 13 July 1574 by Elector John George of Hohenzollern as the first Protestant Latin school in Brandenburg at the site of a medieval Greyfriars monastery (Graues Kloster), that had been secularised in 1539 in the course of the Reformation. The premises were centered around the Gothic abbey church dating from the 13th century, its ruins still being visible near Alexanderplatz.
After the ancient school's buildings had been destroyed by Allied air raids in 1945, the original school moved several times. After the political division of Berlin in 1949, the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster found itself in East Berlin and the Evangelical Church established the present school in West Berlin as the Evangelisches Gymnasium. This found a new home in Schmargendorf in 1954. In 1958 the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster was officially abolished by the Communist authorities, and in 1963 the Evangelisches Gymnasium adopted its traditions and name.
The remnants of the original school's library, including donations by Sigismund Streit and Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, are now kept at the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin.
Read more about this topic: Berlinisches Gymnasium Zum Grauen Kloster
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