Anna Salmberg, née ''Brinck'' (1788,

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

– 1868,

Åbo Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while the metropolitan area ...

), was a Finnish educator. She was the founder and manager of '' Salmbergska flickpensionen'' ('Salmberg Pension for Girls'), one of the most famed and fashionable educational institutions for females in Finland in her time.

Life

Anna Salmberg was born in Denmark but was raised in the Danish Caribbean, where English became her first language. She married the Finnish sea captain Arvid Abraham Salmberg (d. 1809), and moved with him to Finland. She had no children. When she was widowed, she supported herself as a teacher. In 1823, she founded and managed the ''Salmberg Pension for Girls'' in Åbo. Since the foundation of the Christina Krook school in the 1780s, there had been a few private girls' schools in Finland, which remained the only secondary education available for females in Finland until the foundation of the ''

Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Åbo Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Åbo (Swedish Women's School of Åbo) or only Svenska fruntimmersskolan (Swedish Women's School) was a Single-sex education, Girls' School in Turku (Swedish: Åbo) in Finland, active from 1844 to 1955. Alongside its eq ...

'' and ''

Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Helsingfors Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Helsingfors ('Swedish Women's School of Helsinki') or only Svenska fruntimmersskolan ('Swedish Women's School') was a Girls' School in Helsinki in Finland, active from 1844 to 1974. Alongside its equivalent in Åbo (), ...

'' (1844). Of these schools, the Salmberg school in Åbo, and the school of Baroness von Rosen in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

, were described as the most notable. Anna Salmberg defended women's right to education. In her correspondence, she expressed the view, that although the women of Finland may be ignorant, it was the fault of their families, and particularly their fathers, for keeping them that way by not providing them with education and then calling them ignorant.Suomen kansallisbiografia (Finland's national biography)
/ref> As was customary for schools of her kind, most of the education focused on accomplishments, such as drawing, embroidery and etiquette, but her school was recommended for a high level in the subjects, and her school offered more languages than were usual for a girls' school. In addition to French, she also tutored in the English language, at a time when that language was considered more important to learn for men and it was still otherwise unknown in girls' schools in Finland. Her most known students were the writer

Fredrika Runeberg Fredrika Charlotta Runeberg (née Tengström; 2 September 1807 – 27 May 1879) was a Finnish (Finland-Swedish) novelist and journalist. She was a pioneer of Finnish historical fiction and one of the first woman journalists in Finland. In her o ...

and the poet Augusta Lundahl, both of whom studied at her school in 1824–1825.

References

1788 births 1868 deaths People from the Danish West Indies Immigrants to Sweden 19th-century educators from the Russian Empire 19th-century Finnish educators Finnish women educators Finnish schoolteachers Finnish people of Danish descent {{Finland-bio-stub