Sacked in secret from the ‘Colditz in kilts’
Why Gordonstoun founder left Royal Family’s favourite school
IT has educated generations of Royals and was branded ‘Colditz in kilts’ by the young Prince Charles.
Now it has emerged that the founder of prestigious Scottish school Gordonstoun was secretly sacked over erratic behaviour.
Kurt Hahn, who opened the Moray school in 1934, was hailed as a ‘visionary’ by his former pupil, the Duke of Edinburgh.
Now the full story of why the Berlin-born educator left has come to light in a new book, 60 years later.
The maverick educationalist created a spartan regime – endured by Charles, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward – involving cold showers, morning runs and salt gargling.
Previously unpublished documents reveal governors ousted Mr Hahn over his ‘feverish’ outbursts. Correspondence in 1952 from his deputy Henry Brereton states: ‘He gives the most incoherent orders and is generally incomprehensible.
‘One of the symptoms is an increased and feverish activity. He gave three successive breakfasts this morning and then embarked on a row which dragged on until lunchtime.’
The diary of one of his secretaries added: ‘Hahn is always giving orders and then cancelling them, drawing up schemes and then abandoning them.’
At an emergency board meeting there was unanimous agreement that Mr Hahn be removed.
The former private secretary to Prince Max von Baden, the last Imperial Chancellor of Germany, was sent to a sanatorium, before returning to Germany.
One former teacher claimed: ‘Hahn was uncomfortable with women unless they were middleaged mothers.
‘I suppose the truth is that Hahn was a repressed homosexual. Certainly, we all thought so.’
Old Gordonstounians attest to him personally supervising cold showers in a manner that would be unacceptable today.
But the Duke of Edinburgh, a pupil in the 1930s, is an admirer. Last year he wrote: ‘Hahn was undoubtedly a visionary.’
Gordonstoun, which first admitted girls in 1972, was also attended by Zara Tindall and her brother Peter Phillips, while their mother, the Princess Royal, holds the honorary title of school Warden.
Cold showers and physical punishment have long been abandoned at the 600-pupil school.
Kurt Hahn and the United World Colleges by David Sutcliffe is available online.