In the early 1960s, India’s war with Pakistan over Kashmir and its border conflict with China disrupted the functioning of a Mumbai institution that had not yet completed its first year. The Deutsche Schule Bombay (DSB International School) was the realisation of a long-cherished dream of the German diaspora in the city, brought to life with the support of the German Consulate General. Despite the troubled times, the community was determined to make it last.

From the outset, the school was open not just to German nationals but also to children from other countries. The only requirement was that pupils be able to follow lessons conducted in German. Alongside 12 German children in its formative years were five Swiss, two Italian, one Japanese, one English, and one Chilean student.

Yet the decade in which the school emerged was also one in which many expatriate communities in India began returning home. What then drew the Germans to Bombay, and what kept them anchored to the city?

Most histories of the German presence in India trace their origins to the early 16^th century, when merchants from Nuremberg and Augsburg, already active in Lisbon, travelled to India alongside Portuguese explorers and colonisers. Some accounts, however, suggest an even earlier connection, noting that pilgrims may have journeyed during the Middle Ages to Kerala.

As historian Panikos Panayi notes in The Germans in India: Elite European Migrants in the British Empire (2017), “But most attention has focused upon the German merchants who moved to Lisbon and then on to the west coast of India in the early sixteenth century…”.

The 18^th century marked the arrival of yet another group: German Protestant missionaries in South India. In 1706, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau landed at Tranquebar (Tharangambadi, Tamil Nadu) amid the rise of Pietism in Germany. Their evangelical zeal sought the spread of Christianity at home as well as abroad.

While missionaries formed a substantial portion of the community by the time of the First World War, scholars, scientists, and merchants were also present. Among early scholars was Hans Roer, who, Panayi notes, “Born in Brunswick in 1805… studied Sanskrit in Berlin and then moved to Calcutta in the service of the East India Company, becoming the librarian of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1841.”

Similarly, bacteriologist Robert Koch visited Bombay in 1897 on behalf of the German government to investigate an outbreak of bubonic plague. This followed an earlier visit to Calcutta in 1883 to study cholera.

Economic ties expanded alongside scientific exchanges. As German industrialisation accelerated in the 19^th century, representatives of German firms began establishing a presence in India. Panayi writes, “German unification [1871] resulted in the opening of Imperial consulates, above all in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. The introduction of free trade in India in 1882 aided the growth of business with Germany.”

By the end of the 19^th century, major German firms such as Krupp, Siemens, and Thyssen had representatives in India. German engineers from Siemens contributed to the construction of the Tata Steel works in Jamshedpur. Meanwhile, Berlin firms Borsig and Orenstein & Koppel were involved in railway construction in the early 20^th century. In 1896, the first branch in India of Deutsch-Asiatische Bank was established in Calcutta, part of a wider network of branches across Asia.

Gradually, the German community in India grew in size. Census figures from the 1900s show that, after the British, only two other European nationalities numbered more than 1,000 residents in the country: the French with 1,258 and the Germans with 1,458, making the latter the second-largest European expatriate community in India.

Yet, as Panayi notes, the centre of German activity in India was not initially Bombay. “By all accounts, the capital city of British India—Calcutta—remained the focus of the German diplomatic mission both in terms of business and cultural relations,” he writes. It was only as late as 1886 that the Reichstag (Lower House), under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, decided to post a professional diplomat to Bombay.

By this time, though, the relationship between Germany and Bombay had already begun to acquire a more nuanced character. German manufacturing firms had been established in India, and German missionaries were particularly visible in the city’s educational sphere, serving as teachers at institutions such as St Xavier’s College.

These growing connections, however, were disrupted by global conflict. The outbreak of the First World War (1914-1918) and later the Second World War (1939-1945) turned Germany into an enemy state in British India. The consequences were immediate: the German consulate in Bombay was closed, German nationals were interned, and German-owned properties were sealed as ‘enemy’ assets. “For the first time the Germans in India became clearly German because the imperial authorities assigned this nationality to them,” writes Panayi.

Although diplomatic relations resumed relatively quickly after the First World War by 1921, economic normalisation took longer. Industry and trade bodies such as the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry did not readmit German companies until as late as 1929.

Yet author Sifra Lentin, in Mercantile Bombay: A Journey of Trade, Finance and Enterprise (2022), argues, “It was in this political, social and cultural churn of the inter-war years and the Second World War that innumerable German and German-speaking refugees made Bombay their home, resulting in an intellectual and cultural renaissance in the city.”

Interestingly, Lentin notes that a German Society emerged in Bombay in 1932. This new body sought to promote the study of the German language, establish a German library in the city, and launch a newspaper, with education at the centre of its activities. Within four years, a German Club had also been founded in Bombay, alongside a sports club.

Following Indian independence, relations were rebuilt with remarkable speed. India became the first country in the world to re-establish diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). It was only after this moment that a more institutionalised cultural and educational ecosystem between Bombay and Germany began to take shape.

Max Mueller Bhavan and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) created channels for cultural and academic exchange.

The foundation of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce in 1956 by Mr. Ferdinand Kurt Heller, for instance, was particularly noteworthy. Heller, a German businessman who had been living in Sri Lanka, was interned by the British during the war and sent to the well-known U.H. camp in Dehradun. “After the war, he moved to Bombay, started the company Protos, and helped German firms, including Siemens, reestablish themselves in India. He was also instrumental in initiating the Rourkela steel plant in Orissa, at the time the world’s largest steel plant, in collaboration with major German companies,” says Bernhard Steinruecke, Chairman Emeritus of DSB International School who first visited India in the 1990s when working for the Deutsche Bank.

Around the same period, other German enterprises such as KSB Pumps, Buckau Wolf and German Remedies also set up operations in Bombay and Pune.

Puneet Chhatwal, Chairman, Board of Governors, DSB International School, MD and CEO, The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), recalls his days at the Max Müller Bhavan to The Indian Express: “I went to the Max Müller Bhavan in the 1980s. In those days, in the evenings, I used to study German. It was a very different time—we learned languages and other skills because many of us hoped to go abroad, especially in hospitality.” Reflecting on the language itself, he adds with a note of caution, “It’s a very difficult language since it has a third article: masculine, feminine, and neutral, which changes the composition of the verbs and adjectives that follow.”

According to Lentin, the Germans in India constituted “an elite minority,” a status reflected in their education and occupations. Prominent within this German ecosystem in Bombay was the Deutsche Schule Bombay, also known as the German School. The initiative took shape after a survey was conducted among German parents in the city to gauge their interest in such an institution. On September 16, 1960, the German School Association was founded and registered as the school’s governing body. Suitable premises were soon secured in a stately villa on Kher Marg (Ridge Road) in Malabar Hill.

Founded in 1960, the school moved in 1967 to the ‘Villa by the Sea’, its present building on Warden Road—now Bhulabhai Desai Road—in South Bombay. Chhatwal says, “We have two campuses today: the Garden Campus in Breach Candy for younger children, and the Euro Campus at Urmi Estate in Parel for the middle and senior school. The Garden Campus is beautiful—once you step inside, it feels like a world of its own amid the city. What’s interesting is that students receive an international education while still being rooted in the local atmosphere of Mumbai—it’s really a meeting of East and West.”

Among its struggles was the school’s long-standing goal of recognition as a foreign-based German school authorised to award a final degree. After a visit by a representative of the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs in early 1980, the school received permission to conduct final examinations. On April 25, 1981, all eight students passed the Class 10 exams. Formal recognition as a foreign-based German school with a final degree was expected after the second round of examinations, marking an important milestone in the school’s history.

The 1990s brought along serious challenges. Student numbers declined sharply: from about 60 children at the start of the decade to 39 in 1996-97, and just 21 students in 1997-98. Financial support from Germany also decreased, leaving only the principal and two other teachers funded by the German Foreign Office.

Eckhard Gaumnitz, principal from 1995 to 2001, recalled in a school magazine: “When I came to Bombay in the mid-Nineties as the new German Principal, the erstwhile Deutsche Schule Bombay was struggling for survival… from the perspective of the Principal and Board of Governors of the German School ‘the house was on fire’.”

⁠Speaking with The Indian Express, Dr Howard Gee, Principal, DSB International School, notes that “In the late 90s, the German-speaking population was so small that the school was no longer viable, and the decision was made to open an English-medium section.” This was introduced alongside the German section offering education from Classes 1 to 6. “The school officially became known as DSB International School.”

⁠On keeping the school relevant, Gee notes that the faculty are encouraged to adopt innovative teaching methods. He also highlights the school’s international partnerships, amongst which is an exchange programme with a school near Stuttgart.

Elaborating on this, Chhatwal remarks, “As part of the global partner-city concept, several exchanges take place between Stuttgart—the capital of Baden-Württemberg—and Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. Recently, agreements were signed between the two states to bring qualified workers from India to Germany, provided they speak German.”

“One of the most visible cultural exchanges is the Stuttgart Meets Mumbai Wine Festival, which has been held for over 22 years at the lawns of Taj Land’s End, usually in late January or early February, where winemakers from the region come for a two-and-a-half-day German food and wine festival. Similarly, Oktoberfest celebrations have also been organised—earlier at the Racecourse grounds until the pandemic, and now again at the German school—creating ongoing cultural exchange opportunities between the two cities,” he adds.

In the aftermath of the First World War, when a defeated Germany was rebuilding itself under the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), its capital city of Berlin became the scientific and cultural hub of continental Europe. “It was during this time – the 1920s and 1930s –,” notes Lentin, “that numerous Indian artists visited and worked in Berlin.”

Some well-known names from Bombay included directors Mohan Bhavnani and Himanshu Rai, and actress Devika Rani, all of whom trained and worked in Berlin’s Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa), a consortium of Germany’s leading film studios. They brought back new ideas from Europe and implemented them in Bombay.

Steinruecke notes that such movements, were critical in shaping Indian cinema and in strengthening the cultural foundations that led to the establishment of the German School.

Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani, for instance, returned to Bombay from Germany in 1934 with the Hindi version of their talkie film, Karma, directed by Franz Osten and produced as an Indo-British collaboration. They also established, in the same year, the city’s first professionally run film studio, Bombay Talkies, in Malad, a suburb of north Bombay.

Another significant contribution came from a core group of European immigrants: Walter Langhammer (mentor and teacher) and his wife Kathё, who became secretary of the Bombay Art Society, Rudy Von Leyden (art critic and cartoonist at The Times of India), and Emmanuel Schlesinger (art collector). They mentored the artistic growth of Bombay’s Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG), whose original members included artists F N Souza, M F Husain, S H Raza, S H Gade, K H Ara, and S K Bakre. According to Steinruecke, their efforts shaped the modern India art movement after independence.

“Though most of Bombay’s German-speaking immigrants left the city by the 1960s and early 1970s, their cultural legacy was the internationalism that was so much a part of the city then,” writes Lentin.

Scholars argue that by the end of 1920, the story of the vast majority of Germans in India had largely come to an end. Panayai writes, “The First World War therefore utterly transformed the position of the Germans in India. Earnestly working away, whether as missionaries, scholars or businessmen, and remaining largely anonymous for the preceding century…” Yet some remained, businesspeople, those at the consulate, artists, and scientists, and it is their resilience that Deutsche Schule Bombay continues to symbolise.

The school itself has evolved, adopting a more international character. But the teaching of German remains integral and for students who are new to the language, the school offers structured pathways to learn it: “We offer starter courses for the IB Diploma, and some children even join in Grade 9 and by the end of Grade 10 have already earned an IGCSE in German, says Gee.” As a result, he notes, the school maintains “a very healthy German language programme throughout the school that serves both native and non-native speakers.”

“I think DSB is a great soft power success story,” says Steinruecke, smiling, “I call it a small United Nations.”