The article in Sunday’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said the teacher, referred to only by the initial H., coerced students during school excursions to pose naked for the camera.

A lover and former student of the teacher allegedly assisted during the filming, helping in particular when it came to inexperienced children.

After H. retired, this former student lived with and cared for him until the teacher’s death in 2006.

The victims of the sexual abuse are worried that the pornographic images could become public, the newspaper wrote.

One of the victims has pressed criminal charges although the statute of limitations for the case has expired. The teacher taught at the elite school in southern Hesse from 1966 to 1989.

The first accusations against the teacher surfaced as far back as 1968 when a 13-year-old student gathered ten other children who had also been abused. The group then went to the director and complained.

However, nothing was done about the music teacher. Instead, the student who had assembled the group was expelled.

The Odenwaldschule was established in 1910 with a holistic ethos of raising a child according to its own individual desires, rather than through discipline and drill.

The 225 pupils currently attending (200 as boarders) live in so-called ‘families,’ with their class teacher as a kind of ‘family head’ who lives in an adjacent room. A boarder’s place at the school currently costs €2,220 a month.