Burse 1967

The Burse (from the Latin bursa, meaning a house where students could live and be fed) on the south side of the Provost Church was built between 1664 and 1668 by Vicar Heinrich Reck, the first rector of the Thomaeum, on the site of St. George’s Vicariate, which had been destroyed during the Hessian War in 1662. It became the home of Kempen’s first grammar school.

In spring 1669, the Thomaeum High School, founded ten years earlier, moved into this simple Baroque building after previously struggling with insufficient classrooms. The energetic councillor and headmaster Heinrich Reck expanded the curriculum to include religion, mathematics, geography, and German.

During the French occupation in 1798, the building was closed, and the school relocated several times. Later, the Burse was used as a church administrative office and as a library. Today, it serves as the parish centre of the Catholic parish.