Vorschule

Fritz Pfeffer attended the Vorschule attached to the Grossherzogliches Hessischen Gymnasium zu Giessen for three years from the age of six.^[1] The Vorschule of the Gymnasium gave access to the sexta (first grade) of the Gymnasium. The entry requirements were: to be at least nine years old; to be fluent in reading and writing in German and Latin script; knowledge of German nouns and inflections with Latin terminology; good progress in spelling and in the use of the four basic arithmetic skills.^[2]

Grossherzogliches Hessischen Gymnasium zu Giessen

After the Vorschule, Fritz Pfeffer attended the nine years of the Grossherzogliches Hessischen Gymnasium in his home town of Giessen from the school year 1899-1900.^[3] The vast majority of the pupils of this school were Evangelical, but there were also a few Roman Catholic and 'Israelite' pupils in each class.^[4] During his graduation year, the school celebrated its three-hundredth anniversary.^[5] The festivities opened on 2 November 1907 with the musikalische-deklamatorische performance of Antigone by Sophocles. In it, Fritz Pfeffer played the role of the blind seer Tiresias.^[6] On the occasion of the anniversary, the school was named after its founder Ludwig V and was henceforth called Landgraf-Ludwigs-Gymnasium.^[6]

In 1908, Fritz Pfeffer took his final exams.^[7] The final examination subjects listed on his certificate were: Religion, German, Latin, Greek, French, History and Geography, Mathematics and Physics.^[6]

The graduates of 1908 were: Gustav Barth, Albert Bossler, Rudolf Buderus, Hermann Buss, Karl Dietz, Gottfried Franz, Friedrich Hagen, Franz Hochreuter, Wilhelm Klein, Paul Lenz, Roland Lichtenthäler, Otto Lindenstruth, Wilhelm May, Ernst Meyer, Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, Fritz Pfeffer, Hugo Prätorius, Heinrich Rinn, Heinrich Roese, Hermann Roth, Eugen Rothenberger, Friz Schaai, Hermann Schlosser, Emil Sehrtr, Karl Seib, Hans Siebeck, Otto Stotz, Adolf Waas, Edmund Wetter.^[8]

Three students from this class, Barth, Klein and Siebeck, are named in a list of the fallen in the 1914-1918 war.^[9]

The school archives of the Landgraf-Ludwig-Gymnasium preserve a chronicle and correspondence of the contact maintained by the former classmates.^[10] This states that Pfeffer attended the second meeting of the former classmates on 1 August 1908 at Restaurant Der Brauerei Denninghoff during which the seventeen participants drank forty-three litres of beer.^[11] Fritz Pfeffer also participated in the circular letter, an initiative of a former classmate. In his letter of 30 October 1920, Pfeffer told how he had fared since the final exams,^[12] and about his service during World War I.