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Katharineum

school

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ454607
Source-derived summary

The Katharineum zu Lübeck is a humanistic gymnasium founded 1531 in the Hanseatic city Lübeck, Germany. In 2006 the 475th anniversary of this Latin school was celebrated with several events. The school uses the buildings of a former Franciscan monastery next to Saint Catherine Church, which was extended in the 1880s.

At the Katharineum it is possible to choose Latin as the first foreign language. In year nine it is also possible to choose ancient Greek as the third foreign language.

Thomas Mann, himself a student of the Katharineum, thought of this school when describing the school Hanno went to in the Buddenbrooks. Mann, who as a bad student had to resit two years, made it clear that he disliked the Katharineum by describing both the school and the teachers with strong sarcasm. His brother Heinrich Mann described the school and one infamous teacher in Professor Unrat.

Editorial summary

“Katharineum” enters the record as school. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Katharineum and school can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1531, 2006—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1531-03. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Katharineum and school.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Katharineum” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Katharineum and school provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q454607. VIAF identifies the subject as 144887697. Authority coordinates are 53.869, 10.689. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1531 and 2006.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Katharineum”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Katharineum primary sources, Katharineum archive and Katharineum research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Katharineum”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Katharineum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.