This table shows the regional distribution of secondary schools across Germany’s federal states and the Prussian provinces for the years 1911, 1926/27 and 1938. After the end of the First World War, the school system in the Weimar Republic underwent extensive reforms. With the “Weimar School Compromise” in 1919 and the Primary School Act of 1920, a school system consisting of a common four-year elementary school and a subsequent division into a three-tier school system was introduced.

The number of students at secondary schools initially increased overall but fell again from the mid-1920s. Berlin had a particularly high number of students per 1,000 inhabitants; Saxony and Brandenburg, on the other hand, were below the national average. However, the regional differences in the distribution of secondary schools did not necessarily correspond to the contrasts between rural and urban-industrial areas but were also due to differences in demographics and educational policy traditions.