The Presidential Library's cinema club meeting to provide a discussion of the film about the history of the famous Karl May School

The regular meeting of the Presidential Library’s cinema club, which will be dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Karl May School History Museum, will be held on September 9, 2020, at 15:00 (Moscow time). The program includes a screening and discussion of the film "Karl May Gymnasium - an Example for Descendants" by Yuri Matsin. The film shares the main principle of this school, based on the conviction of the classic of the pedagogical science John Amos Comenius: "Love above learning".

The cinema club meeting will be broadcasted on the Presidential Library's portal in the Live broadcasts section in accordance with the program of live broadcasts of events, as well as on the cinema club's page on the VKontakte social network and the library's YouTube channel.

Yuri Matsin is the author of four films dedicated to the school and its museum. He is the winner of the All-Russian Contest "Gratitude to the Internet-2016" in the nomination "Local Historian of the Internet".

The Karl May School was opened on September 22, 1856, on Vasilievsky Island in Saint-Petersburg as a private German Male School. The educational institution was headed by a talented practiсing teacher Karl Ivanovich May (1820–1895) - a follower of the innovative pedagogical views of Adolph Diesterweg, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Nikolai Pirogov, Konstantin Ushinsky, Friedrich Fröbel. Karl May created education and intellectual upbringing system, which provided the mutual respect and trust of teachers and students, constant interaction with the student's family. It expressed the teachers' desire to recognize and develop the individual talents of each child, foster the independent mind.

This all, together with the high quality of education, made it possible to graduate young men, notable of richly furnished intellect. The School leavers were ready to serve for society. Publicist and literary critic Dmitry Filosofov, the graduate of the Karl May School in 1890, noted that the institution was "a state within a state, far from the formal approach". It all was possible thanks to the special atmosphere called the "May spirit".

The Presidential Library’s cinema club meeting will include the presentation of the book "Karl May School History Museum - 25 Years" and a speech by Nikita Blagovo, the founder and director of the Karl May School History Museum, the laureate of the Nikolai Roerich International Prize, the laureate of the Academician Dmitry Likhachev Prize, a Karl May School graduate in 1949. He will tell about the history of the museum in 1995-2020.

The museum exposition spotlights the main stages of the 150-year history of the educational institution. It presents school items, textbooks, personal belongings of students and teachers, classroom furnishings and equipment, as well as the school atmosphere. Special exposition is dedicated to academicians Nikolai Roerich and Dmitry Likhachev, students of the Karl May School.

25 thousand people from 28 countries and 124 cities visited the museum since its establishing. The Cinema Club Meeting will be attended by Sebastian Zinoviev-Fitzlayon, Honorary Consul of Australia in Saint-Petersburg, a descendant of the Karl May School graduate Alexander Zinoviev.