School

The half-timbered house, to be found at the corner of Kirchstraße and Dechant-Schwamborn-Straße has a remarkable history and has been perfectly restored by the Kaiser family. On the order of the unmarried Elisabeth Bender, daughter of the court clerk Severin Bender, a foundation to establish a girls school was set up. In 1816 the Unkel parish opened the school to teach girls from Unkel, Scheuren and Rheinbreitbach under the supervision of a female teacher. Educational institutions for girls were rare at that time, as the school system in the hands of the catholic church focused only on the education of boys.

Boys were taught in the boys school from 1612 directly opposite the choir of the catholic church Saint Pantaleon. The teacher was usually also the sexton and therefore lived in the half-timbered boys school.

In 1855 the boys and girls of both schools moved into the newly erected building on the moat at the southern exit of the town. This building served as the Unkel town hall from 1926. The old boys school and sexton‘s house was torn down in the course of a necessary expansion of the churchyard in 1911.