Former deaconry building

At a glance:

Once a fief of the lords of Ulm, the present building was constructed here in 1762 and served as a Latin school from 1770 to 1839. In the early days of industrialisation, the sons of merchants, civil servants, and industrialists received a good education here. The school’s most famous pupil was the priest and writer Johann Peter Hebel, born 10 May 1760 in Basel. He spent childhood in Schopfheim, Basel, and Hausen im Wiesental, where his father worked as a weaver during the winter.

After attending the Latin school in Schopfheim from 1771 to 1774, he was able to pursue secondary education in Karlsruhe thanks to financial help, and later studied theology and ancient languages.

Hebel’s first Alemannic poems were written in 1800, while living in Karlsruhe. From 1807 to 1819, Hebel took over the editorship of the Badische Landkalender, for which he wrote his “calendar stories”; his first calendar appeared in 1808 with the title Der Rheinländische Hausfreund. A collection of his most popular stories was compiled in 1811 as Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes, which was even included in the “ZEIT-Bibliothek der 100 Bücher” list of 100 essential books by the German newspaper Die Zeit in 1978.

Johann Peter Hebel died on 22 September 1826 in Schwetzingen, while on an official trip in his capacity as prelate of the evangelical church and overseer of school exams in Mannheim and Heidelberg.