Gemeinschaftsschule

[edmont]

Dictionaries seem to translate Gemainschaftsschule as "interdenominational school." However, I've noticed that many of the external examples the Linguee website shows translate the word as "comprehensive school" -- a different meaning than "interdenominational." Linguee itself translates the word as "interdenominational," despite the external examples Linguee shows.

"Comprehensive school" (the usual translation of Einheitsschule) refers to a school attended by people of different economic backgrounds and different abilities. 

Interdenominational school" of course refers to a school attended by people of different religious denominations.

Question:
Can Gemainschaftsschule mean "comprehensive school"? Or is that just a commonplace error, which is why the dictionaries don't show it? (One dictionary does include "common school" as one definition.)

Thank you for any assistance.

[tiorthan]

The term is used differently in different contexts and times.
Before the Weimar Republik the term Simultanschule was used for interdenominational schools. The term Gesamtschule was not defined in any legislation. It's a normal enough compound noun, so it may have been used before 1919 in whatever meaning the author wanted.
The Weimar Republik replaced the term Simultanschule with Gesamtschule.
After WWII the situation in Germany slowly changed and nowadays the meaning has become completely unpredictable. Nordrhein-Westfalen still has Gemeinschaftsschulen as interdenominational forms of Grundschule and Hauptschule in their state's constitution while in other states the term is used for special forms of Gesamtschule (similar to comprehensive schools but not exactly the same either) except for regions that still have schools affiliated with a denomination where it's used for one thing or another.
Pre 1970 it's safe to assume that it always means interdenominational I guess.

[edmont]

Thank you very much, tiorthan.