Deutsch
"The circle was small, when we started to form it, so small as it can possibly be to be still regarded as a circle. At least two persons - father and mother - are necessary to complete it. With the first child it extended, with every following child it became bigger."
"Above all there is no other which I would rather hand the crown than the mysterious Seven. Later - to the awakening sense for shape and form - the Seven with its standing position and crossbeam has come fatefully close to the imagination of the gallows."
Nikolaus Groß
With these quotations from the book "Seven around one table" by Elisabeth and Nikolaus Groß we welcome you warmly on the Nikolaus Groß homepage of the Evening Grammar School Essen. This homepage is dedicated to the patron of the school, the Working class leader, Resistance fighter and Martyr Nikolaus Groß and his wife Elisabeth.
For Nikolaus Groß the Number Seven had a deep symbolic and later also a fateful meaning. On the one hand it stands for the number of his children whom he loved abundantly. On the other hand - thus Pope John Paul II on 7th October 2001 - not even the love for his own family could prevent him from resisting the diabolical powers of his time. This resistance resulted in his execution on the gallows.
The mystical and fateful symbolism of the number Seven is the key to this page. It will always accompany you when you visit the various pages - starting from the biographies of the parents of the Seven and the commemoration of a man who was refused a grave, the spiritual heritage of the German resistance movement, the global dimension of his beatification, the communication with institutions which are today concerned with the commemoration of Blessed Nikolaus Groß to the publications and the actual news from the region and beyond. You can reach these parts of the homepage, when you choose the seven fields surrounding the pictures of Elisabeth and Nikolaus Groß.
Bernhard Nadorf
Oberstudiendirektor i. K. i. R. und ehemaliger Schulleiter des Nikolaus-Groß-Abendgymnasiums