The Windsor Mountain School was a coeducation

Coeducation

Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...

al boarding

Boarding school

A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...

 high school

High school

High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....

 in Lenox, Massachusetts

Lenox, Massachusetts

Lenox is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. Set in Western Massachusetts, it is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 5,077 at the 2000 census. Where the town has a border with Stockbridge is the site of Tanglewood, summer...

.

The school was established in Lenox in 1944 by German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Jewish educational reformer Max Bondy and his wife Gertrude Bondy. The Bondys had earlier established an international school

International school

An International school is loosely defined as a school that promotes international education, in an international environment, either by adopting an international curriculum such as that of the International Baccalaureate or Cambridge International Examinations, or by following a national...

 in Germany, initially in Gandersheim

Bad Gandersheim

Bad Gandersheim is a town in southern Lower Saxony, Germany, located in the district of Northeim. , it had a population 10,572.Bad Gandersheim has many half-timbered houses and is located on the German Framework Road .- Geography :...

 and later in Marienau

Coppenbrügge

Coppenbrügge is a municipality in the Hamelin-Pyrmont district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated approximatively 15 km east of Hamelin.The Municipality covers the following villages:* Bäntorf* Behrensen* Bessingen* Bisperode* * Coppenbrügge...

. When the rise of Nazism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 threatened their enterprise, they left Germany, re-establishing their school in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 in 1937. In 1939 they moved to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, reopening their school in Windsor, Vermont

Windsor, Vermont

Windsor is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 3,756 at the 2000 census.-History:One of the New Hampshire grants, Windsor was chartered as a town on July 6, 1761 by Colonial Governor Benning Wentworth. It was first settled in August 1764 by Captain Steele Smith and...

, and then later in Manchester, Vermont at the site of the Wilburton Inn

Wilburton Inn

The Wilburton Inn is a historic hotel, restaurant, and estate located in Manchester Village, Vermont.Built in 1902 by Albert Gilbert, a wealthy Chicago industrialist, the Wilburton was at the time the largest privately held estate in the region. James Wilbur, president of a Chicago bank, purchased...

, before moving it to Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

.

In 1951, after Max Bondy's death, his son Heinz succeeded him as headmaster. Heinz Bondy led the school for 25 years until it closed in the mid-1970s.

Operated according to progressive education principles, the school was unusually democratic

Democratic education

Democratic education is a theory of learning and school governance in which students and staff participate freely and equally in a school democracy...

 in its governance, with a student government that was empowered to make all nonacademic rules. As of 1970, there was no dress code, student publications were not censor

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

ed, and there were no restrictions on student political activities. The school's philosophy held that the exercise of freedom would help students become responsible, self-directing people.

Among the prominent Americans who sent their children to Windsor Mountain School in the 1960s were musicians Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte

Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

, Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...

, and Randy Weston

Randy Weston

Randy Weston , is an American jazz pianist and composer, of Jamaican parentage.-Biography:Weston studied classical piano as a child. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he ran a restaurant that was frequented by many of the leading bebop musicians...

 and civil rights lawyer Clifford Durr

Clifford Durr

Clifford Durr was an Alabama lawyer who played an important role in defending activists and others accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras and who represented Rosa Parks in her challenge to the constitutionality of the ordinance requiring the segregation of passengers on buses...

 and his wife, activist Virginia Foster Durr

Virginia Foster Durr

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1574Virginia Foster Durr was an American and a white civil rights activist and lobbyist...

.

As of 1970, Windsor Mountain had about 250 students, including about 40 African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s.

Educator Hans Maeder

Hans Maeder

Hans Karl Maeder was an innovative educator who founded the Stockbridge School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts and served as its director and headmaster for 23 years.-Early life and career:...

, who was later to establish and lead the Stockbridge School

Stockbridge School

Stockbridge School was a "progressive" co-educational boarding school for adolescents near the Interlaken section of Stockbridge, Massachusetts and which operated from 1948 to 1976.-History:...

, taught at Windsor Mountain School for a year in the 1940s. Poet Gerald Hausman

Gerald Hausman

Gerald Andrews Hausman is a storyteller and award-winning author of books about Native America, animals, mythology, and West Indian culture...

taught at Windsor Mountain School from 1969 to 1976.