The Bondys

The Bondy’s were the founders of Windsor Mountain School, it was the last of several schools that began in Germany beginning in 1920. There are three books about the Bondy family and their schools; People of Windsor by Rick Goeld, Windsor Mountain School, A Beloved Institution by Rosselle Chartock, and Marienau by Annemarie Roeper. The picture shows a family gathering at the Windsor campus circa 1949, shortly before Max’s death. On the left is George and Annemarie (Bondy) Roeper, then Gertrud, Max, Heinz and Ursula (brother and sister), and Curt Bondy (Max’s brother). Windsor Mountain School was born in America in Windsor Vermont in the fall 1939 at the former Evarts Estate called Juniper Hill Farm (pictured below). The staff was Max & Gertrude, George & Annemarie Roeper, and a cook. There were three students, Heinz, the cook’s child, and Winnetou Zuckermayer. Unlike in Germany, the school name would continue when moved to Manchester VT and finally to Lenox MA in 1944. While the Roepers started at Windsor, they would move to Detroit to start a school for Gifted Children in 1942. Both George and Annemarie retired and have past away, however their school still survives today and celebrated a 75th anniversary in September 2017 (Click Here for more on The Roeper School).

Heinz would graduate from Windsor join the army as a part of the secret division know as the “Ritchie Boys” (click here). After Max’s death in 1951, Gertrud continued as Headmaster of Windsor, and Heinz returned from college at age 26 to become the Assistant Headmaster. By the mid 1960s, Gertrud seceded most of the day-to-day responsibilities of running the school to Heinz who ran the school as Headmaster until it closed in June of 1975.

Gertrud went to live with the Roepers after Windsor closed and lived over two more years. Nancy Littlell a 1975 graduate, became her caretaker through most of 1977 … see her story of Gertrud’s last years on a separate page [click here or go to “Alum Stories”].

When Windsor closed Heinz became an Assistant Dean at University of Mass – Boston for several years, then went on to several other educational sector jobs until he past away in 2014 … more on his after Windsor years [coming]. In 2012 Heinz gave a long interview about his life to the US Holocaust Archives (click here – ±hour long). Also see his Berkshire Eagle Obit (click here).

We also hope to have more about Ursula and Curt … if you would like to share (or correct/update) any of the Bondy family history, please email alum@windsormountainschool.com.

Here is what Wikipedia has for Max Bondy as of 2010 _Max Bondy-Google-GermanDec2010

Also “A Personal History” by Gertrud (from Daniel Kegan) _Gertrud Bondy- Personal History-OCRed that appears to be a poor OCR (Optical Character Recognition) of a typed paper. In any case read it as though she was speaking to you in her German/English and how you had to parse the ideas she conveyed, so later on you would say to yourself … that’s why she told us to “wake up”!