Kurt Hahn

Kurt Matthias Robert Martin Hahn (5 June 1886 – 14 December 1974) was a German educator. He was decisive in founding Stiftung Louisenlund, Schule Schloss Salem, Gordonstoun, Outward Bound, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award, and the first of the United World Colleges, Atlantic College. Life Early life Born in Berlin to Jewish parents, Hahn attended school in the city, then universities at Oxford, Heidelberg, Freiburg and Göttingen. During World War I, Hahn worked in the German Department for Foreign Affairs, analyzing British newspapers and advising the German Foreign Office. He had been private secretary to Prince Max von Baden, the last Imperial Chancellor of Germany, and in 1919 was part of the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where, as secretary and speechwriter for the German minister of Foreign Affairs, Graf Brockdorff-Rantzau, he witnessed the creation of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1920, Hahn and Prince Max founded Schule Schloss Salem, a private boarding school in Baden-Württemberg in south-western Germany, where Hahn served as headmaster until 1933 and Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Hahn was raised Jewish, and began his fierce criticism of the Nazi regime after the Potempa murder of 1932, when Stormtroopers attacked and killed a young communist in the presence of his mother. The Stormtroopers were originally sentenced to death, but when they were given amnesty and celebrated by the Nazis, Hahn spoke out against Hitler publicly. He asked the students, faculty, and alumni of the Salem school to "choose between Salem and Hitler". As a result, he was imprisoned for five days, from 11 to 16 March 1933. After an appeal by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, Hahn was released, and in July 1933 he was forced to leave Germany and moved to the United Kingdom.