It is not known when a school was established in Wiesbaden. There are only clues from the second half of the 15th century. The old school stood on today's Mauritiusplatz. In the course of the introduction of the Reformation in 1543, Count Philipp zu Nassau appointed the scholar Bartholomäus Beringer from Otting in Bavaria as schoolmaster and expanded the school to include a Latin school. At the "elementary level", reading and writing and the basics of Latin were taught using the catechism. Those who could read were sent to the "Grammatica", where grammar was practiced on the basis of a few Latin works. After reaching the "Dialectica", texts by Roman authors were read, verses were written and dialectics and rhetoric were practiced in preparation for attending grammar school and university.

For the longest period of its existence, the Wiesbaden Latin School was a preparatory school for the upper classes of the Idstein grammar school founded in 1586. The immediate superior of the teachers was the first town priest, the "inspector", who was superordinate to the "superintendent", who - also a clergyman - belonged to the "consistory" as the state authority. In 1546, the old school building was dilapidated. The count donated the house of the "Frühmessner", which had stood empty since the abolition of mass, to the town to establish a school. It was located at the junction of the later Schulgasse and Kirchgasse. It was not until "shortly before 1730" that a second German "school in the Sauerland" was established. There had been a third school in the orphanage in Neugasse for the children living there since 1778, which was abandoned when it was closed in 1804.

From 1800 onwards, decisive changes were gradually introduced, which gradually led away from the rigid structure of the traditional Latin school and the system of town schools and towards more differentiated forms of schooling that met the needs of the townspeople. At this time, the "town school" on Mauritiusplatz/Schulgasse (still single-storey) housed the Latin school with 50 pupils, the boys' school with 90 boys aged ten to 14 and 90 boys aged six to ten and the girls' school with 120 girls aged six to 14. A total of 130 pupils were taught at the "Schule im Sauerland", on the corner of Webergasse and Saalgasse. The "orphanage school" in Neugasse had 50 orphans.

In 1804, the principal of the Latin school, Karl Philipp Salomo Schellenberg, developed a plan to establish a school for the daughters of the educated classes in conjunction with the Latin school in order to promote the intellectual education of girls. On October 5, 1807, the new Latin and girls' school began classes under the name "Friedrichschule" (in honour of the Duke). The subjects taught were religion, morals, natural history, Latin (boys only), French, German, geography, history, arithmetic, mathematics (boys only) and writing. The special features of the religions were not allowed to be dealt with in the joint religious instruction. The fact that the Friedrichschule did not meet all requirements was evident from the increasing number of private institutions founded alongside the public schools, of which the private educational institution of Johannes de Laspée, founded in 1809, occupied a special place.

With the "Nassau School Edict" of 24 March 1817, the Duchy of Nassau created the first standardized legal basis for the organization of the school system in Germany. The key points included the introduction of the simultaneous school, the reorganization of school supervision and the division of the school system into communal elementary schools and state schools for scholars. The state created a central study fund to pay the teachers, maintain the buildings and equip them. The elementary school was to be divided into elementary and secondary schools and provide people with the general education required by the state. The elementary school taught children from the age of six to the age of 14 in four classes in 30 to 32 lessons per week: correct speaking of the mother tongue, religion and morals, singing, reading, arithmetic, spelling and penmanship, writing essays, general geography and celestial science, general knowledge of history, natural history, nature and health and general agricultural and industrial knowledge. The Realschule was intended to provide the exclusively male youth with the necessary advanced education for the profession of craftsman, artist or an agricultural or other trade.

The School Edict also decreed the dissolution of the Latin schools and the grammar school in Idstein and in their place, created four-class state pedagogies (scholars' schools) for boys in Wiesbaden, Dillenburg, Idstein and Hadamar as preparatory schools for the newly created state grammar school in Weilburg, whose graduates were entitled to study at university. The ceremonial opening of the Wiesbaden Pädagogium took place on June 14, 1817 in the building of the "Latin and Girls' School" on Mauritiusplatz. Teaching was provided by the rector, the vice-rector and two vice-principals as well as several secondary teachers for singing, writing and drawing and clergymen for religious instruction. As the old town school gradually became too small, a new school building was built next to the later Marktkirche - in the garden of the old castle - the Stadtschule am Markt, which was officially opened on November 3, 1817. The elementary school moved into the first floor and the Pädagogium into the upper floor until it moved into its own building on Luisenplatz (now the Hessian Ministry of Culture) in 1830.

In the 1840s, citizens engaged in trade and commerce increasingly brought the idea of political participation to the population and demanded better education for their children. In 1840, the government finally decided to establish the secondary schools for boys provided for in the 1817 school edict. The Wiesbaden Realschule, which opened on 01.05.1840 with two classes under the direction of the principal of the Pädagogium, who was now in charge of both schools, aimed from the outset to place it on an equal footing with the Gelehrtenschule (Pädagogium) with its focus on science, technology, trade and foreign languages. By law dated June 22, 1842, the grammar school in Weilburg and the teacher training colleges in Wiesbaden and Hadamar were expanded to full grammar schools.

The law also stipulated the establishment of a Realgymnasium in Wiesbaden. The elementary school system was also reorganized into three departments in 1843. The elementary school (1st section) was to accommodate boys and girls from the poorer and lowest classes, while the "bourgeois school" (2nd section) was to be primarily responsible for the youth of the middle classes and residents due to its curriculum, which provided the full measure of elementary school education now required by the middle classes. The 3rd section, a pre-school for attending the Pädagogium and the Realschule, was to be reserved for the boys of educated parents who wanted their children to have a higher or technical vocational education. The first section moved into the newly built school on Lehrstraße, while the second and third sections were housed in the town school on the market square. In 1844, the government finally granted permission to expand the Realschule, which had been built in 1840, into a three-class state Realgymnasium, which could also be attended by pupils from outside the town. It was primarily intended to improve the general scientific education of pupils, mainly from the middle classes, and prepare them for a higher technical-practical profession or a corresponding technical school, etc. The school opened at Easter 1845 on the upper floor of the town school on the market square. The school was given the name Herzogliches Realgymnasium.

On May 5, 1847, an important step was taken towards a differentiated school system in the interests of the citizens of Wiesbaden with the founding of the municipal secondary school for girls. Further changes were made in 1857: The four lower Realschule classes were again separated from the Realgymnasium and, together with the preparatory class of the elementary school (section 3), formed the basis for the new Höhere Bürgerschule für Jungen (now Oranienschule). From this point onwards, the four lower classes (Septima, Sexta, Quinta and Quarta) of the Herzogliches Gymnasium on Luisenplatz also formed the basis for the Realgymnasium, which now moved to the Münze building, also on Luisenplatz, in place of the separated Realschule classes. In 1860-63, the school had to be moved to the Schützenhof due to the high noise level during mint production, but was able to return there in 1864.

In 1864, the elementary school area was divided into an elementary school called Department A and a middle school as Department B, still under Nassau administration. The former was limited to the teaching required by the law of 1817 and had an important educational mission in addition to its learning mandate. Both were to be implemented in a school which was to strive for an "intimate" relationship between school and home and between teachers and pupils and which was to set this process in motion through games, festivals, walks and the temporary division of the large number of pupils in a class. The middle school was to differ from the elementary school by offering more in-depth lessons in real subjects and an optional range of courses in French, geometry and drawing.

As a result, numerous new elementary and secondary schools were built in Wiesbaden, but the secondary schools were also further expanded or new ones built. When the first new school building on the "Heidnischer Berg" (later the school on Schulberg I) was completed in 1863, into which the elementary boys' school then moved, the building on Lehrstraße was fully available to the boys' secondary school, while the girls' secondary school remained on the market square. In 1870, the elementary girls' school was built on Schulberg II, in 1879 the elementary boys' school on Bleichstraße (today the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences), the secondary school on Rheinstraße (today the Werner-von-Siemens-Schule), in 1884 the elementary boys' and girls' school on Kastellstraße (boys and girls separated by a fence across the schoolyard) and in 1897 the elementary boys' school on Blücherplatz.

Development also continued in the area of higher education: the Höhere Bürgerschule moved into a new building in Oranienstraße in 1868. The Royal Grammar School on Luisenplatz was extended in 1880 due to a lack of space and further expanded in 1884. In 1901, the Höhere Töchterschule finally received its own school building on Schlossplatz next to the Marktkirche as an upper lyceum (in Prussia, a lyceum was a girls' secondary school, while an upper lyceum was a secondary school with an upper school and an elementary school teachers' seminar). In 1903, the building of today's Gutenbergschule was built as an elementary school and on May 1, 1905, the Oberrealschule i. E. (under construction) on Zietenring (with a three-year pre-school) was inaugurated (today: Leibnizschule). Apart from the foundation of the institution for the blind on the Riederberg in 1861, the first one-class auxiliary school in Wiesbaden was established in the school on the Schulberg in 1904. In 1912, the secondary school on Blumenthalstraße (today: Gerhart-Hauptmann-Schule) and in 1914 the elementary school on Lahnstraße (today: Albrecht-Dürer-Schule) - probably the last school construction project in Wiesbaden during the German Empire - were opened.

The period during and after the First World War brought many changes. Restrictions on the number of lessons, merging of classes, frequent changes in the distribution of lessons, coal shortages, influenza epidemics; in addition, there was hunger, the wounded, missing and dead in the families. After the war was lost, the disruptions continued: the foreign occupation in Wiesbaden confiscated several schools - the Gutenberg elementary school, for example, had to be accommodated with twelve classes in the Realgymnasium building on Oranienstraße. The emergency period of inflation, with rising school fees among other things, had a negative impact.

But reforms were also on the horizon. The Reich constitution of 1919 declared the elementary school to be the lower school common to all types of school for all pupils, so that all pre-schools in Wiesbaden had to be phased out in 1921-23. At Easter 1924, the first primary school pupils were admitted to the sixth form of the grammar schools after passing the entrance examination. In this context, the Oberrealschule am Zietenring, for example, was defined as a mathematics and science grammar school in 1925. In 1924-32, educational work also had a high priority in elementary school. The influence of the work school movement with its demands for pupils to work independently, to learn work techniques in order to solve tasks with methodical awareness, for manual forms of work and vocational preparation at school became increasingly important in school practice during these years.

However, this changed from 1933 onwards. Thoughts on pedagogical renewal fell silent and, in contrast to the period 1924-32, their practical implementation no longer played a major role. The increasing narrowing of teaching and the political abuse of schools began. There was only one absolute value for the school to achieve: commitment to the "Führer" and the so-called Third Reich. This was to make it an instrument for implementing the political ideas of the Nazi dictatorship. Special focal points were incorporated into the curricula - e.g. racial studies, gliding, heredity and more. In addition, there were flag ceremonies and prescribed school celebrations that served to glorify the champions of the Nazi ideology or the new rulers. Attendance at national political films and radio broadcasts was made compulsory. Jewish pupils were gradually forced to leave schools, and a Jewish school was established on Mainzer Straße. The Hitler Youth was involved in the education of young people, and in 1934 a so-called State Youth Day was introduced. School clubs, denominational and other youth associations were banned. In 1933, the mint building was used by the SA from spring to summer as a place of detention and torture for political prisoners and Jews. On June 12, 1933, the long school tradition at Luisenplatz finally came to an end. The two oldest grammar schools in the city, which had already been merged, had to leave their school buildings and move to the former Gutenberg elementary school on Mosbacher Straße. The administration of the Reich Labor Service, Gau Hessen-Süd, moved into Luisenplatz 10, and the Reichsluftschutzbund, Wiesbaden local group, moved into the building at Luisenplatz 5 (Münze) in the summer of 1933.

At the beginning of the 1937/38 school year, the existing, different types of secondary schools were dissolved "for reasons of population policy" in favor of one main form, the secondary school with English as the first and Latin as the second foreign language. Only the humanistic grammar school remained as a secondary school with a grammar school, while the school on Zietenring was continued as a Riehlschule, a municipal "secondary school for boys on Zietenring". At the same time, the length of secondary schooling was reduced from nine to eight years. The regime increasingly used the pupils for extracurricular purposes such as helping with the harvest, issuing clothing cards, collecting fruit, beechnuts, scrap material, etc. Canceled classes and health problems due to frequent air raid alarms were the order of the day.

During the Nazi dictatorship, the two fully developed auxiliary schools on Luisenstraße in Wiesbaden and in Wiesbaden-Biebrich had a particularly hard time. In the course of the struggle for the existence of the auxiliary schools, all kinds of harassing measures were used in an attempt to decimate their facilities and diminish the commitment of the teaching staff. The fully developed system in Biebrich was reduced to a two-class branch of Wiesbaden, and the auxiliary school in Wiesbaden was even split into individual classes and housed in various elementary schools. At the end of the war, the auxiliary school system existed only in name.

The American military government approved the reopening of the various school types by 12.11.1945 at the latest. The lack of teaching staff (due to death, imprisonment, illness, war damage and pending denazification proceedings) as well as damage to the school buildings, plundered classrooms, the health of the pupils, coal shortages, lack of food, lack of teaching and learning materials, etc. hindered the implementation of reasonably orderly school lessons. The previous school structure - elementary schools, middle schools, auxiliary schools and secondary schools - was essentially retained after 1945. The first curricula for secondary schools in the state of Greater Hesse were published as early as 1946 and were intended as a guide for the years of transition, in which the new subject of social studies played a special role after the Hitler dictatorship. They called for school education within the framework of democracy to return to the basic demands of freedom, justice and human dignity, love of nation and fatherland and respect for all peoples and races. The pre-1937 class designations Sexta to Oberprima and the language sequence at the Realgymnasien - English from Sexta, Latin from Quarta and French from Untersekunda - were reintroduced, parents' councils and pupil co-administration were established and freedom of learning resources was introduced. From 1956, all Hessian schools were given new names.

The education plans that came into force in 1957 created three types of grammar school: the grammar school for classical languages, the grammar school for modern languages and mathematics and science and the grammar school for advanced studies. The mathematical-scientific grammar school was divided into a modern language and a mathematical-scientific branch in the sixth form, whereby a music branch could later also be established at individual schools. In 1962, the Dilthey School moved to a new school building on Mosbacher Berg, and in 1968 the Gerhart Hauptmann School was established as a middle school. In 1969, the Gymnasium am Mosbacher Berg was founded. At the same time, the Diltheyschule moved to a new building on Georg-August-Straße. There, in addition to the old language branch, a new language and mathematics/science branch was established.

According to a so-called Bremen Plan adopted in Bremen in 1960, schools were to be built according to three basic principles: Introduction of ten years of compulsory primary schooling in all federal states, joint teaching of all children in a unified school, extension of elementary school by a two-year remedial stage to six years. This led to the introduction of a 9th year of compulsory primary schooling in Wiesbaden in 1964 and, on December 1, 1966, the division of elementary school into elementary and lower secondary schools with the changeover of the start of the school year from spring to August 1, whereby both forms could be independent or linked together as school branches.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a network of new special schools (today: special needs schools) and new school buildings were built, particularly in the primary school sector. Advocates of a differentiated school for all saw an approach to this in a joint school that would offer every pupil the intellectual opportunities to develop their inclinations and interests, their talents and abilities: the comprehensive school. Its development took place in several stages - not least for political reasons. The pioneer of this type of differentiated school in Wiesbaden was the Wilhelm Leuschner School, founded in Mainz-Kastel in 1968, which was initially a "comprehensive school based on school type", starting in year 7. In this form of comprehensive school, the previous educational pathways "Hauptschule", "Realschule" and "Gymnasium" were retained from year 7 onwards, but allowed for intensive cooperation between them. In grades 5 and 6, the Gustav-Stresemann elementary school in Mainz-Kastel and the Brüder-Grimm elementary school in Mainz-Kostheim were preceded by "support levels", each of which operated according to a system of core lessons (German, world studies, natural sciences), subject performance courses A, B, C (English, mathematics) and subject lessons (religion, sport, art, music, handicrafts, family home economics), which, apart from religion, were often offered as elective courses or study groups. A second step towards a differentiated school was the transformation of the Wilhelm Leuschner School into an integrated comprehensive school in 1969, in which the separation of school types was abolished and lessons were taught in heterogeneous groups (core lessons) and subject groups (course lessons) of different levels. The central subject area of the core lessons was social studies, which combined the traditional subjects of geography, history and social studies.

A further step towards eliminating the separation of school types was the introduction of the compulsory remedial level in 1986, in which all children had to attend a remedial level after elementary school in years 5 and 6. Förderstufen were attached to selected elementary school, offered English as a first foreign language and worked with undifferentiated core groups and - depending on the school - with external differentiation in English and mathematics in basic courses (G) and advanced courses (E) or in A, B or C courses depending on performance. An exception to this were the special stages at the Blücherschule and the Konrad-Duden-Schule in Sonnenberg, which offered Latin and English as a first foreign language. Teachers for the E and A courses were seconded from Wiesbaden grammar schools to the elementary school on an hourly basis. However, just one year later - due to the result of the state parliamentary elections - the compulsory attendance of the special stage was abolished again and the school authorities were given the opportunity to set up 5th/6th grade classes at secondary schools again.

At around the same time as the discussions and decisions on the comprehensive school and special stage, decisions were made on the reform of the elementary school (1970), the introduction of framework guidelines as a curriculum based on learning objectives (1972) and changes to the upper secondary school (1976, 1977/78 and 1990), which primarily affected the number, type, selection options and assessment of courses. Other key changes included the elementary school framework plan (1995), the introduction of a school conference consisting of parents and teachers as a further co-determination body, the introduction of childcare facilities at elementary school, the creation of all-day schooling, the development of content-related curricula for lower secondary schools, intermediate secondary schools and grammar schools and the shortening of the grammar school period to eight years (G8).

In 2005, an ordinance regulated "joint teaching", i.e. the support of children and young people with and without special educational needs at mainstream schools. Alongside special schools and outpatient support, "joint teaching" is the third pillar of special educational support in Hesse. State-wide Abitur examinations and state-wide final examinations at Realschule and Hauptschule schools should reduce performance differences between schools and raise the overall level.

There are currently 35 elementary school in Wiesbaden (two with branches), of which (branch and associated main school counted as one school): 11 pure elementary school, 2 with entry level and supervised elementary school, 5 with pre-primary class and supervised elementary school, 11 with pre-primary class, 2 with entry level and 4 with supervised elementary school; 1 primary and lower secondary school, 1 lower secondary school, 3 linked lower and intermediate secondary schools, of which 1 with evening secondary school and 1 with remedial level; 4 intermediate secondary schools and 1 evening secondary school; 10 grammar schools, of which 2 upper secondary schools, 1 evening grammar school; 7 integrated comprehensive schools; 6 special schools and 1 department for the physically disabled, including 1 school for learning assistance with all-day school and preliminary class, 2 schools for learning assistance with special educational advice and support center, 1 school for the physically disabled with all-day school and preliminary class, 1 speech therapy school and school for the visually impaired with preliminary class and special educational advice and support center, 1 school for the sick with special educational advice and support center.

The perennial discussions about changes to school types came full circle in Wiesbaden in 2009: The Theodor-Fliedner-Schule developed from an additive (school type-related) comprehensive school into a grammar school, while the Ludwig-Erhard-Schule, a combined secondary modern and secondary modern school that was being phased out, started as the Alexej-von-Jawlensky-Schule in Wiesbaden-Dotzheim with a new building as an integrated comprehensive school.