Kent School had several other functions before its time as a British school. The complex was built in the early twentieth century as St. Josefsheim, with a chapel and residential and care buildings.
A history that belongs to the place
Under National Socialism, the complex became part of the psychiatric care system in which people were systematically persecuted and murdered. Children with disabilities were killed in the so-called Kinderfachabteilung. The Landschaftsverband Rheinland documents 99 children murdered in this department between late 1941 and June 1943. This is a more precise account than the various, conflicting casualty figures circulating on urbex websites.
After the war, the complex served, among other things, as a military hospital. From 1963 it was used as a school for the children of British military personnel. The name Kent School refers to that later period, rather than the building’s origins.
The church attracted my attention as a photographic subject. That does not make the rest of its history any less important. I therefore leave out unconfirmed stories about later owners and their motives. The series concerns the building as I found it, while acknowledging what happened there before.
In the chapel, the painted vaults, pointed arches and stained-glass windows are particularly striking. The floor is covered with debris from a very different phase than the period for which this space was built. It is tempting to look only at that decay. Here, however, the history of the people who stayed there belongs in the story at least as prominently.
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