Erzbischöfliches Studienheim St. Fidelis, Catholic educational complex in Sigmaringen, Germany

The Erzbischöfliches Studienheim St. Fidelis is a three-winged building on the Schönenberg in Sigmaringen, built in two years to designs by Hans Herkommer of Stuttgart and Friedrich Imbery of Sigmaringen. It opened in spring 1933, cost 600,000 Reichsmark, and was considered modern and functionally furnished at the time. Prince Friedrich Viktor von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen donated the adjoining land up to today's federal road, where fruit and vegetables were grown.

Pastor Thomas Geiselhart bought the birthplace of Fidelis of Sigmaringen at auction on 10 June 1855 for about 8,000 guilders and moved in with eleven Gymnasium pupils on 5 October 1856. A board was appointed in 1857, and the house opened as the Seminarium Fidelianum in autumn 1867 with 16 pupils. The archdiocesan boarding school closed in 2003.

The house took its name from Fidelis of Sigmaringen, whose birthplace Pastor Thomas Geiselhart bought at auction on 10 June 1855 for about 8,000 guilders. Pupils attended the Gymnasium Hedingen in the Hedingen monastery, while the house rule set times for study, prayer and leisure. A library and two pianos provided musical training.

The three-wing building stands on the Schönenberg above Sigmaringen, near today's Bundesstraße; the site was extended by land donated by Friedrich Viktor Prinz von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, where fruit and vegetables were once grown for the house. The institution was dissolved in 2003, so the former boarding house is not open as a museum; view it from the public street.

The complex was nearly turned into a Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt (Napola). Rektor Anton Sauter learned of the plan shortly beforehand and, late in the evening, went to a Wehrmacht officer he knew; the next day the convent was requisitioned as a Wehrmacht military hospital, which kept it out of the SS's reach.