Nørre Gymnasium is one of

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 ...

’s largest

gymnasiums A gym, short for gymnasium (: gymnasiums or gymnasia), is an indoor venue for exercise and sports. The word is derived from the ancient Greek term " gymnasion". They are commonly found in athletic and fitness centres, and as activity and learn ...

offering both Danish instruction as well as the

International Baccalaureate The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), more commonly known as the International Baccalaureate (IB), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the I ...

curriculum. It was founded in 1818 by Caroline Wroblewsky as a school for young girls, and since 1972 it has been located in

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Denmark Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...

Early school history

School's founding

In 1814 a law was passed in Denmark requiring a seven-year compulsory education for all citizens. As public schools alone could not meet the demand, the new law led to a huge increase in the number of

private school A private school or independent school is a school not administered or funded by the government, unlike a State school, public school. Private schools are schools that are not dependent upon national or local government to finance their fina ...

s. There were 127 applications for school formation between 1815 and 1818. In 1818, the year of her father's death, Marie Albertine Caroline Wroblewsky sent in an application for an “institution of general education for a limited amount of young girls.” She was rejected as there were already too many schools in the Trinitatis parish. In her second application she requested to form her school in the suburb of

Nørrebro Nørrebro (, ) is one of the 10 official districts of Copenhagen Municipality, Denmark. It is northwest of the city centre, beyond the location of the old Northern Gate (''Nørreport''), which, until dismantled in 1856, was near the current N ...

. The school commission queried the necessity for a girls’ school there, but the municipality's school directors approved Wroblewsky's application on November 7, 1818, the day she turned 26.

Under three managers

Caroline Wroblewsky

The exact location of the school in its first year is not known, only that it was on the

Nørrebrogade Nørrebrogade is the principal shopping street of the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, Denmark. It runs from The Lakes, Copenhagen, The Lakes in the southeast to Nørrebro station in the northwest, linking Frederiksborggade and Dronning Louises B ...

. It is possible to locate the school on different land titles from 1823. In 1824 the school was expanded to include older girls and Lieutenant Larsen was hired to teach French. When Vilhelm August Borgen became Copenhagen's first school director in 1844, he standardized school levels and supplied information about the new requirements. In Wroblewsky's school there were 7 male and 2 female teachers with 40 students divided into two classes. The subjects taught were

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, Danish,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, French,

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geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...

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arithmetic Arithmetic is an elementary branch of mathematics that deals with numerical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In a wider sense, it also includes exponentiation, extraction of roots, and taking logarithms. ...

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and

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was introduced in 1848. Wroblewsky retired in 1858 after 40 years at the school. She died on 1875, at age 82.

Caroline Wroblewsky's stepdaughter

Caroline Wroblewsky's stepdaughter Emilie Christine Løbner took over the management of the school, herself a former student and teacher at the school. On September 11, 1858, Løbner took an exam to become a 3rd-degree institution manager, giving her the right to expand the school and teach girls up to the age of 16. In 1873 there were a total of 15 teachers at the school. In 1892, after 34 years of service, Løbner retired.

Karen Kjær

Karen Kjær, educated as both a school manager and a teacher, became head of the school in 1892. She moved the school to

Fælledvej Fælledvej () is a street in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, Denmark. It links the major shopping street Nørrebrogade in the west with the square Sankt Hans Torv in the east. History Fælledvej takes its name after the common Blegdam F� ...

street, splitting the students into single-year classes. The student population grew to 324 in 1904 (from 66 in 1882) reaching a total of 480 in 1918, the school's centennial year. Because of the continued increase in the student body, Karen Kjær moved the school to an independent building in the Gartnergade neighborhood in 1897. In Gartnergade, the school continued to expand. In 1904 room was created for the new subjects,

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and

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. When modern foreign language courses were introduced in Denmark in 1909 (as opposed to classical), the school's management decided to create a high school, completed in 1913. The science-mathematical course was an option at the school from 1915. Although overcrowded, the school stayed at the same location until 1971.

The 20th century

Nørre Gymnasium through 1940

In 1919 the school changed its name to Nørre Gymnasium and, for financial reasons, was split into two parts. One part became a public high school with Karen Kjær as principal and the other a private preparatory school with Dorothea Krag as manager. Both schools were housed in the same building until 1924, when the prep school moved to Thorvaldsen's Girls’ School. By the time Karen Kjær died, Nørre had developed into a high school (including a

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

) from its humble beginnings as a school for young girls. It had also been led by only three women in its 105-year history. Knud Theodor Thejll, former head of K. Thejll's Higher Girls’ School, became principal in 1923 and continued leading in Kjær's style. Thejll was concerned about the lack of space and other problems with the school's layout and sought a solution in 1932. It was also during Thejll's tenure that Nørre high school students started going on seven-day study trips, usually within Denmark, sometimes going into

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. The first trip to

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took place in 1970. Thejll left the post in 1940 and died a year later.

Problems at the school

Ingeborg Hasselriis was the school's principal from 1940 to 1960. During the

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, the school came under threat of being converted into a hospital for Nazi troops. The lack of space continued to be a problem in 1940. In one case, a closet was being used as classroom: Dark, and with the corridor-facing wall made of glass, the space was only and was shared by 9 students. The school was also aging; the physics and chemistry labs were at low standards, and there was no large assembly hall or bicycle storage area. Boys were not yet admitted as they were in many other public schools. Thus, under Hasselriis, Nørre Gymnasium lost its popularity and began to lose students. (The school finally turned co-ed at the end of the 1950s.) Ingeborg Hasselriis left the school in 1960 and was succeeded by Jørgen Andersen. Under his direction a

student council A student council (also known as a student union, associated student body or student parliament) is an administrative organization of students in different educational institutes ranging from elementary schools to universities and research or ...

was established in 1965, which called for a partial

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permission and allowed students to stay in classrooms during breaks. In 1968 Nørre celebrated its 150th anniversary, and it was confirmed that a new school would be built in Mørkhøjvej.

The new school in Mørkhøjvej

The building for the new school opened officially on March 23, 1972, and classes in the new facility commenced on August 9 for the new school year. In 1991 the IB programme, the international educational curriculum, became available at the school. Nørre Gymnasium is only one of ten IB-accredited schools in Denmark.

List of the school's principals

References

External links

The homepage of Nørre GymnasiumStatistics about Nørre Gymnasium
{{DEFAULTSORT:Norre Gymnasium Gymnasiums in Copenhagen Girls' schools in Copenhagen International Baccalaureate schools in Denmark