My First Driving Lessons

Another clipping from a scrapbook kept by mother brings back much fonder memories--learning street signs and how to navigate. I cannot remember if there are photographs of us, but I believe there may be, but will have to add them later (if and when I find them). 

This is a story from the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, from September 5, 1958. My first Googling was to see if these were available online, and it turns out that they are, but for a fee. However, without buying in, I was able to capture a slightly buggy OCR transcription, so I didn't have to type it all:

Future Drivers Study Road Safety Now

Traffic center--on miniature scale—at Stuttgart, Germany, teaches youngsters rules for driving on the highways

By Jack Walters, Staff Writer

WEEKDAY AFTERNOONS, the youngsters Stuttgart, Germany have themselves a ball. They go driving in their own traffic center which is located in the heart of the city, in a park built especially for them.

On a miniature scale, it has everything that to drive grownups crazy, but for kids is just plain fun--winding streets and crossroads, traffic signs, street signs, stop-and-go signals, a policeman in a traffic booth equipped with a loudspeaker, a gas station, and so on.

Youngsters from seven to 14 drive scooters, peddle carts, bicycles, tricycles and even miniature put-puts with real gasoline engines. The visitor with half-closed eyes surveying the scene might be reminded of a Tom Thumb riot, or one of those speeded-up films of a downtown traffic jam, but Stuttgart’s Youth Traffic School, as it is officially called, has a purpose other than recreation.

It began as the idea of a former traffic commissioner Karl Weber, who finally succeeded in selling the city council in 1953 on his plan to build and operate the center. That year, incidentally, 13 children in Stuttgart were killed in traffic accidents.

Almost immediately following its inauguration, the center attracted International interest. Movies of it were made and shown In Europe, the U.S. and South America. Traffic officials from countries made trips to Stuttgart to see the and before long with the encouragement of the federal government other West German cities began to build similar driving parks for youngster

The Stuttgart center also has a tiny schoolhouse where classes are held morning for elementary school children. It equipped with blackboards, charts, and signs, and is taught by one of the center’s two policemen, Erich Klumpp.

The American Elementary School in Pattonville sends its classes there, too. In the afternoons from two to four, any child who wanders in can check out a vehicle fitting his age, and take off. He’ll be expected to obey traffic regulations, however, and there are two alert bona fide policemen to keep an eye on him.

Foul-ups, said the police attendant Eugen Lang, occasionally happen. As though to emphasize his point, a boy gleefully plowed vehicle into that of another child. Lang grabbed for the loudspeaker microphone to pronounce the worst punishment the center can inflict on its inhabitants.

“You,” he shouted, “have been demoted to a pedestrian Turn in your bicycle and hit the crosswalk.”

Last year, only two children were killed in Stuttgart traffic mishaps.  During the same period, from 1953, traffic had Increased more than 50 per cent.

Lang and Klumpp say of their charges that children generally are more alert than their parents. Being used to crowded traffic conditions from birth, they are developing into more relaxed and safer drivers with less wild idiosyncrasies than their elders. Good driving will become second nature to them.

So back to my project--wondering and wandering. First, of course, is there any evidence of this "Youth Traffic School" on the Internet? Second, does it still exist?

The very first hit is to an English-language brochure "Stuttgart Partnership for Education" which references a Youth Traffic School, where children can get a "cycling license" but the one photograph shows children on bicycles on what looks like a regular street, but it certainly suggests that they still do something of this sort.

Another hit takes me to a 2008 presentation by the Stuttgart mayor at a World Congress on Cities for Mobility. There is a page there that has a photograph that looks like a more miniature street (and maybe even similar to the photograph in the story).

However, I can't find anything else more. So, I go and enter "Youth Traffic School" into Google translate, so I can search for the German "Jugendverkehrsschule".

The first hit on that search gets me to a Stuttgart government page on which I find this address: Forststraße 26 70176 Stuttgart S-West, so I thought I should go to Google Maps and see what I can see there, and it looks like a good hit--there definitely looks like a street grid in this little park!

But, the very next hit takes me to a Press Release from July 9, 2019, and it turns out that this school will soon be history! Accepting the Google Translate, here is what I learn:

The youth traffic school moves from Diakonissenplatz onto the urban property between Zamenhofstrasse and Unter dem Birkenkopf. The new building is being built on the southern edge of the urban green area. That is why greening also makes up over 45 percent. The new building has one floor and offers around 650 m² of usable space including a covered entrance area.

The building structure develops out of the landscape and is divided by projections or recesses. The folded, slightly sloping, green roof should blend harmoniously into the surroundings. The facade with natural-colored slats is combined with colored accents in the building incisions. The theoretical lessons for cycling training take place in the daylight-flooded training room. The youngsters can then also use a bike course that depicts numerous traffic situations in a large city: traffic lights, traffic signs, lane markings and a subway crossing contribute to practicing in a realistic environment. The old traffic pulpit of Diakonissenplatz will be moved to the new location in memory of the oldest youth traffic school in Europe.

The youth traffic school is used by around 70 schools in Stuttgart and has three school classes every day throughout the year. The Deaconess Square will then be transformed into a public park.

I think that is enough wandering about the school, but I did wonder about a few other things from the original article: (1) are either of the police officers mentioned discoverable, (2) what is a Tom Thumb riot, and (3) what is with this "Pattonville"--I never heard my first elementary school with that location name.

1. I would think Karl Weber was going to be impossible to find, since it is a common name, but when I added Jugendverkehrsschule, I scored big--an almost 30-minute film on YouTube from 1956 about the first Youth Traffic School! In German, but with great video after you get past the first boring interview sections.


Using Google Translate, this is the description of the video:

After the Second World War, the city of Stuttgart developed a special program for school-age youth in cooperation with the Verkehrswacht. The disappointing result of the theoretical traffic instruction called for new ways in the field of traffic education. This knowledge resulted in the establishment of the first youth traffic school in the federal territory on Diakonissenplatz in the west of Stuttgart. On the site, barely larger than half a soccer field, Mayor Dr. Arnulf Klett on October 23, 1953, the first youth traffic school in Germany, probably even worldwide. Media across the country reported this innovation. This was thanks in part to Karl Weber and Paul Barth, city officials. The duo pursued the vision of “achieving greatest success through practical and theoretical traffic education”, as city director Weber promoted the project in front of the Stuttgart city council in the year it was founded. There was pressure: in the post-war period, the dangers of road traffic had caused ever greater problems In 1953 alone, 13 children died in Stuttgart, despite the much lower traffic density than today

Road traffic. During this time, the Deaconess Square was something like the nucleus of road safety work in the post-war period and a direct reaction to these accident numbers."

Erich Klumpp I didn't do so well on!

2. Searching (with quotes) for "Tom Thumb riot" yields a total of five hits, three of them from Google Books. The first is from Cambridge Book of Days by Rosie Zanders. She writes that, on March 6, 1846:

A significant 'disturbance'  took place at the Town Hall in Cambridge, where General Tom Thumb was putting on a show. Tom Thumb, only a a couple of feet tall, had earlier in the day amused the crowds by driving about town in a tiny coach; the coachman and footman were two little boys wearing wigs and the 'horses' were small ponies. But as the day wore on, the jovial atmosphere soured and fights broke out in central Cambridge in what was later to be called the Tom Thumb Riot.

So, a side mystery--how did Jack Walters get to use this term in 1958, if there are only 5 Google hits on it 2020?

3. And as for Pattonville, that gets its own Wikipedia treatment.  According to the article, it "is a German neighborhood with the unusual distinction of being a former US Military installation, as few US installations returned to German control have been maintained in their former form." The article says that the Stuttgart American High School was located there, but does not mention the American Elementary School (which I attended grades K through 2). This could be a whole other diversion, but let me just capture one note here (from the 2016-17 Robinson Barracks Elementary School Handbook):

Our original facilities were built in 1934. They were to be used as the Southwest Regional Headquarters for the S.A. Storm Troopers, or brown shirts. Hermann Sippel, a German architect, designed the building. His name is imprinted in a brick by the door near the main office. 

After World War II, which ended in 1945, our school was used as a military hospital, first for French Forces, and later for American Forces. In 1950, the original building was converted to a school for the dependents of military members stationed in Stuttgart. At first it was known as Stuttgart American Elementary School. Several years later, when seventh and eighth grade classrooms were added, the school became known as Stuttgart Elementary and Junior High School.