From Monday, March 3, to Friday, March 5, knights in all kinds of more or less shining armours reigned at FSG: »The Middle Ages« was the topic of this year’s »Week of Special Acitivities«.

There is a gallery of dozens of photographs showing what it was like. Mind the download times.

… it’s T-shirt weather in Lünen, and pupils are enjoying the first days of spring in our school yard. See the photographic impressions..

… who can name them? A Biology teacher with English as his mother tongue can, perhaps.

FSG’s Biology teacher Herr Leismann not only knows all the (German and Latin) names of the local birds, he can also identify them by their song and can give interested pupils, parents and colleagues hints on how to do so themselves: Every Friday morning until the end of the school year, they are invited to join Herr Leismann on his birdwatching walk through Luenen.

Nearly two handfuls of birdwatchers were present at 6.00 o’clock on Friday, April 30, to follow Herr Leismann. See the photos!

Herr Engel reports:

»In the context of our two-year ›Comenius‹ participation, guests from England and Denmark visited FSG: Apart from teachers Paresh Shah and Lorna Barry from Salford and Gerda Carstensen from Slagelse, two pupils from each town – Anders Prasse, Stefan Skovgaard, Mark Adams, Paul – took part in lessons to get an impression of what school life in Germany is like.«

Read more in Herr Engel’s exhaustive report !

Hellweger Anzeiger magazine and »Dancing School Kochtokrax« offered a prize for the best school magazine in Unna County. The prize – called David – was handed over on May 14. Again, Steinzeit magazine was among the winners: »To everybody’s surpise, we were given third prize«, editor-in-chief Juliana Arndt (Form 10d) wrote, »although our application forms had been mislaid by somebody at our local post office and were handed in at the very last moment by Herr Suckrau.«

It has really been fifteen years already? Can’t be, can it…?

On June 5, 2004, that was a typical reaction by quite a few former students of FSG who had started their scholastic career in 1980 and had left FSG in 1989 with their »Abitur«, their final exam.

In the afternoon, deputy headmaster Herr Korn had shown the alumni around in the school buildings, which since 1989 all have been rebuilt and redecorated.

In the evening, most of the alumni met at »Hubertus« restaurant, near Luenen’s airfield. When the chronicler left the party at twenty to two a.m., there were still two dozen alumni reminiscing about »the olden days«.

Photos were taken, too, and there are two of them to be seen here.

On Tuesday, June 8, Venus passed before the sun. It is impossible to observe this spectacle with one’s naked eyes: Venus is too small, the sun is too bright. That is why Physics teacher Herr Stemmerich and several of his students and pupils built an apparatus to make the astronomical phenomenon visible. Apart from that, they had special goggles ready for pupils and teachers who wanted to take a look at pea-sized Venus transiting before the sun’s LP-sized disk.

Tough luck for those who did not have an opportunity to see the transit: It will be another 122 years before the next occurence of the phenomenon takes place. Unless you prefer to wait you should take a look at our gallery of pictures now.

This is the facetious motto of this year’s Form 13, and in spite of its English sound it is probably a pun that only works in German and therefore needs to be explained, which in turn kills the pun. But anyway, here goes: At German grammar schools, the final exam is called »Abitur«, in short »Abi«. Abi – end of school – leave-taking of our upper class… got it? Well, we told you so…

As has become customary with more ambitious – or sentimental – grammar school finalists, the Class of 2004 published a rather impressive 180-page book with stories and photographs of their nine years at FSG. The book was presented to the public on the eve of Friday, June 18, when this year’s successful exam finalists were given their diplomas in a grand ceremony at Luenen’s »Hilpert Theatre«.

Ms Mireya Garcìa, teacher of Spanish and French at »Hope High School«, Salford, is spending a fortnight in Lünen to get an impression of German school life and to pursue the Anglo-Danish-German »Comenius« projects she has helped to develop in the last months.

Ms Garcìa was given a cordial welcome by FSG staff. In the picture, Herr Lutz Engel, FSG teacher of Englisch and Religious Education and convener of the »Comenius« cooperation, is helping Ms Garcìa with the list of classes she is planning to sit in.

A circus that was doing its rounds through Luenen’s schools to advertise its shows sent an elephant to FSG. The animal was particularly interested in the meaty foliage of our plane trees in the school yard.

It was hot in our assembly hall when on July 8 all the bands and choirs and instrumental groups of FSG gave their grand »FSG Concert« to an enthusiastic audience.

The theme of the concert was Paul McCartney’s music and compositions. In addition, a musical entitled The Death of the Minotaur was performed.

There are a number of pictures of the concert to be seen here in our website. For more pictures, go to Music teacher Herr Schattauer’s own website at http://www.hoerbeispiele.de/cartney1.html.

On July 14, the twelfth-graders of Herr Fischer’s Music Course positioned themselves favourably in the most frequented shopping areas of three large cities of our region. They unpacked their instruments, their music sheets and finally placed the indispensible violin case, open, in front of themselves – for the contributions of their audiences. Read how their street concerts went down with busy shoppers!

As one of several FSG exchange students, Heike Schneider spent eleven months in Georgia, USA. After her return a few weeks ago, she wrote about her exchange year.

In some ways, schools are similar to businesses. For example, when it comes to the »office outing«: In a school, that is the annual staff outing.

Now, anything that has to do with such an outing is usually shrouded in the cloak of strictest privacy. However, of the staff outing to Leipzig between Friday, July 16, and Saturday, July 17, an important photograph must be passed on to posterity (see right).

Nobody knows what the Wagnerian swan has to do with Leipzig or with our school. It is just the spirit of purpose-free levity that deserves to be remembered in this rare document. It has not yet been ascertained which of the three teachers in – or on – the swan did the pedalling and who determined its course.

Thankfully, Monday, July 19, was a real summer day – there might have been the same thunderstorms and the same hot, humid atmosphere as the days before. Like so many other forms, Form 5d used the day for an excursion, in this case a »town rallye« on foot through Lünen’s city centre. In the meantime, parents prepared a barbecue lunch on the premises of a local tennis club, situated cosily in the greenery adjacent to Lünen’s gliding field.

How do the say? »A good time was had by everybody.«

It was in a festive atmosphere that on Tuesday, July 21, pupils, parents, teachers, the Mayor of Lünen, the School Supervisor of our school district and former colleagues and friends came together in our school hall for the official leave-taking of Herr Jürgen Korn, who was FSG’s deputy head teacher for 22 years.

Whoever spoke praised Herr Korn’s outstanding achievements in developing the school educationally, in looking after FSG’s architecturally noteworthy building and in shaping both its extension of 1984 and its annexe of 1999.

Read Head Teacher Dr Czischke’s eulogy for Herr Korn here.

Read what Herr Korn had to say about his – all in all – 55 years of FSG!

… to Herr Korn, outgoing deputy headmaster of FSG, when on the morning of his last schoolday several busloads of FSG pupils awaited him at the doorstep of his flat. They had brought a rickshaw for him and accompanied him through the town centre to school in a marathon that was aptly renamed »marakorn«.

We hate to see them go, but they’ve got to: Ms Berndt (not in the photograph), Ms Bielicki, Ms Schneider and Ms Ullrich will be leaving FSG at the end of the school year to take up teaching posts at other schools. In our end-of-year staff meeting on Wednesday, July 21, both the headmaster and staff representatives thanked the four young colleagues for their work and wished them well for their new schools.

Summer holidays – in German:

What are we supposed to read? For all those in need to know (and with a sufficient command of German) there are suggestions available in this website, suggestions made by pupils, parents and teachers alike. Click on the »Sommerferien« logo and you will be taken there.

We publish four Letters to Parents per year: one at the end of each half-term, and one in the middle of each half term on the occasion of either of our two »Parents’ Consultation Days«. In those Letters, we inform parents of recent events and developments at FSG. Read our Letter to Parents

• of Wednesday, December 03, 2003
• of Wednesday, February 11, 2004