Villa St. Jean International School

Villa St. Jean International School, originally named College Villa St. Jean, was a private school in Fribourg, Switzerland from 1903 to 1970.

This article was translated into French in February 2009 by François Ronsin. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_St_Jean_-_Fribourg_-_Collège_Français This translation can be read as well on the blogs or sites dedicated to Villa saint Jean together with the very personal comments of the translator.

Cet article a été traduit en Français en février 2009 par François Ronsin. http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_St_Jean_-_Fribourg_-_Collège_Français On peut lire cette traduction ainsi que les commentaires très personnels du traducteur sur les blogs ou sites spécifiquement dédiés à la Villa Saint Jean.

History

Founded in Switzerland in 1903, during an upheaval of anti-clericalism in France, as a boarding school for the scions of the French elite, Villa St Jean International School [1] evolved over the decades into an international school educating students from around the world. Illustrious alumni include the aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, considered by many to be among the greatest French writers of the twentieth century, and Juan Carlos I, the current King of Spain. Other prominent present-day alumni include famed soccer coach Anson Dorrance, chocolate entrepreneur, Michael Litton [2], Turkish historian Selim Deringil [3] and Indonesian photographer Rio Helmi.[4]

According to tradition, the school's founder, François Kieffer [5], a Catholic priest of the Marianist teaching order, consciously modeled Villa St Jean on Rugby School, then as now an eminent English public school (private school in American parlance), noted at the time for intellectual rigour and rugged sportsmanship.

Villa St Jean's coat of arms and motto, "de toute Son Âme".

Fr Kieffer built his school on a secluded clifftop bluff, surrounded on three sides by the sinuous Saane/Sarine River, and bordered on the fourth by the quiet neighborhoods abutting the Boulevard de Pérolles, a main thoroughfare leading out of the medieval Swiss burg of Fribourg, considered one of the most beautiful cities in the country. In her biography[6] of Saint-Exupéry, author Stacy Schiff described the campus as a "tidy red-roofed village unto itself" overlooking "sleepy" Fribourg. Ms Schiff's evocation of the self-contained, red-roofed village is quite accurate, but the campus did not overlook the city so much as it was perched on a flat, wooded plateau, nestled in an elbow high above the Sarine River, which over the eons had carved the bluff's curling cliffs. At its edges, in the woods beyond the unmarked perimeter of the campus, the plateau, now the site of the Swiss lycée Collège St Croix[7], gives way to those cliffs which fall 200 feet to the winding Saane/Sarine River below.

A 1911 bird's-eye view of the campus.

Despite their architectural and historical significance, most of the campus buildings were razed in 1981, a travesty that would not have been permitted under more recently enacted Swiss architectural preservation laws. Apart from a wooden-roofed outdoor basketball pavilion, the only building that was left standing, and which still stands today, is Gallia Hall, which served as the principal classroom and laboratory building. It is commonly accepted, although not definitively proven, that Benito Mussolini, who spent a period during his youth as a construction worker living and working in Switzerland, contributed to the building of Gallia.

Villa St Jean, under the guidance of the Marianist brothers and priests who founded and administered it, was remarkable among elite Swiss boarding schools for its ability to reinvent itself as required by changing times. Before World War II, the school was distinctly Gallic in character, a pensionnat (boarding school) educating mostly French aristocrats, many of whom today recall its sometimes strict ascetism. In the decades after the War, Villa St Jean was transformed, and by a decade and a half after the war's end the school had become a metropolitan, international institution, teaching principally an American high school curriculum to a student body gathered from Europe, the Americas, the Near and Far East, and conferring on its graduates either an American high school diploma or a Swiss or French baccalaureate degree, as appropriate to the individual student. The principal year of transition from French to an American curriculum was 1962.

During its incarnation as an international school, although nominally a Catholic institution, the Marianists administering Villa St Jean hired lay faculty and staff without reference to religious affiliation, and admitted students on the same basis. Consequently, the student body was a diverse religious mix of Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and Buddhists, consistent with its international character.

Buildings near the northern end of the campus in 1909 with students playing in the foreground.

Yet, despite this ability to adapt and change, like so many other boarding schools in Switzerland at that time, Villa St Jean was ultimately unable to weather the changes of the late 1960s, and it closed its doors permanently in 1970.

The Villa, as seen from the soccer field.

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The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate. -- Saint Exupéry

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Extensive excerpts from the Villa's last yearbooks have been preserved on the web, along with photographs contributed by students from earlier decades.

The students, an uneven mix of nationalities and character, lived in the Ormes, Sapinière and Bossuet dormitory buildings and attended classes in the aforementioned Gallia Hall. They skied during the winter, often at Chateau d'Oex and Gstaad, and competed against other international schools.

In historical terms, the Villa, at the end, was one of the last all-male boarding schools. The contrast with the culture of the United States at the end of the '60s made for jarring adjustment for many Villa graduates, many of whom lost contact with their classmates during subsequent college years.

The Marianist creed for the school and its students was "the Whole Man." Auguring the upheaval that a year later would seize colleges and universities in Europe and North America and the student "strikes" that would shut down many campuses in the United States, in the spring of 1969, formal classes briefly stopped as students and faculty wrestled with the relevance of the school's culture against the backdrop of dramatic changes in Western culture.

Villa students, circa 1966.

Interior view of chapel and aerial view of campus, pre-WWI

The Marianists' decision to close the Villa was made in December 1969, according to Jerry Gregg, a teacher at the school at the time. Months later, in the spring of 1970, four of the school's six Marianists -- Cy Boschert, Werner Dobner, Fred Fuchs and Gregg -- left the order. The other two -- Brother Patrick Moran, S.M. and the Rev. James Mueller, S.M. -- returned to the United States.

The effort to reunite the Villa community, driven primarily by Steve MacIntyre (class of '68) Kevin Di Palma ('67) and Alan Balladur ('67), did not occur until the mid-1990s, a quarter of a century after the school was closed. An active blog is maintained by graduates of the Bossuet Material Support Committee.

A house band of students, the Sufferin' Kind, maintains a web site here. Several class reunions have been held in Switzerland and in the U.S. in recent years.

External links and references

• Villa alumni blog.
• Fribourg tourism. Art and history.
• The Marianists
• Saint-Exupéry: A Biography Stacy Schiff, Pimlico 1994
• Official Saint-Exupéry site
• Radio Fribourg
• 360-degree panorama of Fribourg
• King Juan Carlos I official page

• 1969 graduate Anson Dorrance
• Stuart McClintock (VSJ '70) on Saint-Exupéry