_Johann Bernhard Basedow_ (1723-1790), the son of a Hamburg wigmaker, attended school in his native city and was for several years a student of theology in Leipsic, later accepted a position as private tutor, and for eight years, from 1753 till 1761, was professor of moral philosophy and belles-lettres in the school for young noblemen (Ritterakademie) at Soröe, in Denmark. This institution belonged to a type common in Continental countries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[24] It had been founded in 1623 by Christian IV, who merely followed the custom of the age when along with teachers of the literary branches he appointed professional masters of riding, fencing, and dancing, a master of gymnastics, and a special teacher of various games of ball. Basedow, therefore, had before his eyes a system of education which actually made the attempt to combine physical with mental training, in the case of youth of a certain class. After leaving Soröe he taught for seven years in Altona, near Hamburg. Thoughts of reform in school life had already begun to fill his mind, and the appearance of Rousseau’s Émile (1762) just at this time no doubt influenced him profoundly. In 1768 he gave up teaching in order to devote himself wholly to the improvement of educational methods. For some years Basedow had been pondering plans for a model school which should embody his ideas and force them upon the attention of educators, and where among other innovations physical training should be given a place in the daily program. The support of the Duke of Anhalt, at whose invitation he removed to Dessau in 1771, enabled him to realize this project, and on December 27, 1774, he opened there his private academy, named by him the Philanthropinum. A year and a half later the number of pupils was only fifteen, including Basedow’s daughter, and only three of these were above eight years of age. But in spite of the unwillingness of parents to subject their children to the new methods, and although the founder himself soon resigned his position at the head of the institution, the effects produced by the experiment were far-reaching and it was watched with the greatest interest. Basedow severed all connection with the school in the spring of 1778, but other men, with greater capacity for organization and administration than he possessed, continued the work in conformity with his views until 1793, when the Dessau Educational Institute, as it had been called after the first few years, finally closed its doors.