There were 15 schools in Pokrovskaya Sloboda (Pokrovsk) in 1897, 939 boys and 591 girls enrolled. In 1909, there were two grammar schools in the settlement. By 1917, there were already 18 schools with libraries included. But those schools were not enough. The situation in the capital of Nemrespublika (the Volga Germans Republic) slightly changed with the establishment of the German autonomy. The building of the German model high school was put into operation in the 1936-1937 academic year. The school staff moved from the old building on the corner of Krasnoarmeyskaya and Telegraphnaya Streets to the new one in Svobody Square. The new building had 22 classrooms, chemical and physical laboratories, a zoo corner, a library, a dining room, and a doctor’s office. The sculptural compositions of V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin complimented the building, as well as two balconies on the ledges of the building, and a swimming pool with a fountain.The walls of the large bright corridor were decorated with Shishkin copies (a famous Russian landscape painter), made by the art teacher Dilem. Children had a green area and a large playground in the schoolyard.The building was the first republican construction in Svoboda Square. It was a ten-year school. It had 1,050 students and 45 teachers on September 1, 1940. During the war, the school was reorganized and converted into a hospital, which received 541 wounded at the first days of the Great Patriotic War.