Born: 11 June 1827, Denmark
Died: 11 August 1913
Country most active: Denmark
Also known as: Ida Charlotte Natalie Zahle
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Her father was a clergyman and author. When the parents died while she was a child, Nathalie Zahle came to live with Professor Eschricht in Copenhagen. At the age of fifteen the young girl went out as a private teacher, feeling sure that God had especially called her to be a teacher. Gradually she realized that her education was deficient in those things necessary to promote her calling. And so she energetically applied herself to study, and in 1851 she passed an examination for school-superintendents. She now began her important work for the Danish Girls’ School.
Miss Zahle’s work can be divided into two groups; first she tried to create a thoroughly trained class of women teachers, who felt that God had inspired them to choose their calling; next her aim was to organize a Girls’ School in which the stress was laid upon educating girls to become independent women though conserving their true womanliness. In 1851 she started a school for lady teachers and in 1852 she took over an older girls’ school to which she attached a boarding-house. The school quickly acquired many pupils. In i860 she founded her school for private teachers, and 1869 a preparatory school for primary school teachers. In the course of years both those activities have been constantly enlarged. In 1877 procured the privilege of sending girls to the university. She also opened a music school and a house-wifery school In 1885 the school was made an independent institution called “N. Zahle’s School” and Miss Zahle was the leader of it until 1900. In her school were now found all classes of female education, with stress laid upon the addition of every new advancement of the time. The richly endowed personality of Miss Zahle was fully capable of leading this large work. She understood how to choose her fellow-workers and to inspire them with her cheerful and wise view of life and with her profound Christianity. Her work has been of immense importance to the Danish school-life. In 1891 Miss Zahle received the Gold Medal of Merit, and after her death a monument was erected in her memory in a park in Copenhagen.