Upon la Cour’s retirement from the position of _Gymnastikdirektør_ in 1870 this office was abolished, and a new one was created—that of inspector of gymnastics (_Gymnastikinspektør_) for civil schools only. But there was no actual separation from military control, for until 1904 it was the army which supplied candidates for the place. The first man to fill it (1870-1886) was Col. Johann Theodor Wegener (1810-1886). He chose for his assistant Captain (later Lieut.-Col.) Julius Amsinck (1833-1902), director of the Military Institute[144] 1867-1885, who later became his successor (1886-1899). Amsinck published in 1883 a manual for school use, based on that of la Cour. After the war of 1864 with Prussia and Austria, in which the Danes lost Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg, there was a period of great depression, soon followed, however, by a variety of measures looking toward national regeneration. In two institutions which date from this time, the rifle clubs (_Skytteforeninger_) and the people’s or folk high schools (_Folkehøjskolerne_), gymnastics was among the means employed, as it had been in Germany by Jahn and his followers a half-century before. For some years before the outbreak of the war the attitude of Germany in the Schleswig-Holstein dispute had been growing more and more threatening, and in January, 1861, an artillery captain, Valdemar Mønster, proposed in the columns of the Danish paper _Fædrelandet_ the organization of voluntary clubs on the plan of the English National Rifle Association, in order that young men subject to military service might have opportunity to become familiar with the use of weapons and fit themselves to defend the country’s right by force of arms. The suggestion met with general approval, and a few months later a Central Committee, with Captain Mønster as its secretary, was formed to guide and assist the rifle clubs which were being started all over Denmark.[145] By the close of 1863 there were over a hundred of them in existence.