Since its foundation, the school has had an almost continuous history, occupying several buildings in Berlin. In the beginning, the faculty comprised Huguenot refugees only and the language of education was
French. The school soon was attended also by numerous
German children of
school fee paying
Prussian nobles and officials, and developed into an elite school.
In the course of the
Prussian reforms, the Collège Français became a common public school in 1809. In view of the growing numbers of pupils, it moved into a larger building built on Reichstagsufer in the
Dorotheenstadt quarter in 1873. The school was attended by an above-average number of
Jewish pupils, who under the
Nazi regime — like Jewish teachers — were harassed and finally excluded in 1938. However, despite all
nationalist efforts, the French language remained the medium of teaching. After 1943 the school was evacuated from Berlin and the historic school building on Reichstagsufer was destroyed in 1945.[5]
After the war, the school moved to the
Wedding district in the
French sector of what was to become
West Berlin. In 1952 the Französisches Gymnasium — Collège Français Berlin was re-established by merging the traditional Huguenot school with the Berlin collège of the
French Armed Forces.
The school moved to its current building, in
Berlin-Tiergarten, on Derfflingerstraße, not far from
Nollendorfplatz
in 1972, after it had been located in Berlin-
Reinickendorf. It educates both
German- and
French-speaking pupils from francophone countries all over the world. Grades are from 5 to 12, with bilingual classes and teaching starting in grade 7. Other languages that are taught are
English,
Latin,
Ancient Greek and
Spanish. Pupils can graduate with either of two
diplomas though many Germans pass both: the
Abitur (German high school diploma) and the
Baccalauréat (French high school diploma).