The commission of 1887 had proposed that the government should start an institution for the training of men and women as teachers of gymnastics (_Gymnastik Læreranstalt_), with a two-years course of study and practice. But in view of the unsettled condition of the whole question the authorities were unwilling to take such action. Professor Hans Olrik, director of the State Teachers’ Course (_Statens etaarige Lærerkursus_, later known as the _Lærerhøjskole_) then suggested, in 1897, that instruction in gymnastics be included as a separate division in that course. The government gave its approval to the plan, the _Rigsdag_ voted the necessary funds, 13,500 Kr., and on March 30, 1898, an official announcement of the organization and character of the new course (_det etaarige Gymnastikkursus_) was published. It was opened September 1 of that year in N. H. Rasmussen’s _Gymnastikhus_ on Vodroffs Vej, under the direction of Cand. theol. K. A. Knudsen.[149] The next year (1899) Amsinck retired from his position as state inspector of gymnastics. His successor, Lieutenant-Colonel Ramsing (1837-1904), already over sixty years old when he was appointed to the office, died August 18, 1904, and now, for the first time in the history of the inspectorship, it was given (September 2) to a non-military man, K. A. Knudsen, the director of the one-year teachers’ course.[150] [Illustration: FIG. 46.—Knud Anton Knudsen (1864-).] The training school for civilian teachers of gymnastics (_det civile gymnastiske Lærerinstitut_) founded in 1808, and the normal school of gymnastics (_Normalskole for Gymnastikken_) opened twenty years later were both short-lived and both had been appendages of _det militære gymnastiske Institut_; since 1859 the teachers of gymnastics in the _Seminarier_ had been non-commissioned officers in the army, assigned to this duty for three-year periods only; and though the non-military schools were given a state inspector of their own in 1870, this position had always been held by an army officer. But with _det etaarige Gymnastikkursus_ of 1898-1899, the _Haandbog_ of 1899, and the appointment of Knudsen to the state inspectorship in 1904 gymnastics in the Danish schools entered upon an independent career. This fact was made plain by a new school law (1899) which prescribed, among other things, that no one should be regularly employed as teacher in the public schools unless he had received professional training in a _Seminarium_. The _nur-Turnlehrer_ was thus to give place to the _auch-Turnlehrer_, an integral part of the teaching staff, and payment for instruction in gymnastics was to be at the same rate as for any other subject in the curriculum. It was therefore chiefly _Seminarium_-trained teachers, both men and women, who attended the one-year course, and from 1901 onward examinations based on the _Haandbog_ of 1899 were given to all candidates for graduation at the sixteen _Seminarier_.[151]