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Anna Charlotta Heikel (2 February 1838 – 3 April 1907) was a Finland-Swedish teacher and director of the School for the Deaf in Jakobstad, Finland, from 1878 to 1898. She was a temperance activist as well as a pioneer of the Baptist movement in Finland and early
Sunday school A Sunday school is an educational institution, usually (but not always) Christian in character. Other religions including Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism have also organised Sunday schools in their temples and mosques, particularly in the West. Su ...
founder.


Upbringing and education

Heikel was born in Turku, Finland, on 2 February 1838 to Lutheran priest and educator Henrik Heikel. She was one of 11 children, among them gymnastics teacher and educator, Viktor Heikel, and
Felix Heikel Karl Felix Heikel (3 June 1844 – 20 May 1921) was a Finland-Swedish banker and politician. He was the son of priest and educator Henrik Heikel, brother of educators and Finnish Baptist pioneers Viktor and Anna Heikel, father of insurance direc ...
, a banker and politician. Ethnologist
Yngvar Heikel Yngvar Sigurd Heikel (19 April 1889 – 1 September 1956) was a Finland-Swedish ethnologist. Life and work Heikel was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1889 to gymnastics teacher Viktor Heikel. Among his family are aunt and uncle Anna and Felix H ...
was her nephew. From 1848 to 1853, she attended the
Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Ã…bo Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Ã…bo (Swedish Women's School of Ã…bo) or only Svenska fruntimmersskolan (Swedish Women's School) was a Girls' School in Turku (Swedish: Ã…bo) in Finland, active from 1844 to 1955. Alongside its equivalent in Helsinki, ...
, a girls' school in Turku. At 22 years old, Anna Heikel did an internship with the "apostle to the Deaf",
Carl Henrik Alopaeus Carl Henrik Alopaeus (5 April 1825 – 10 March 1892) was a Finnish Lutheran bishop and educator, known as the "apostle to the Deaf" due to his work in deaf education. Upbringing and religious work Alopaeus was born in Juva, Finland, in 1825 ...
, in Turku. Alopaeus was a bishop and headmaster of the school for the deaf in Turku, and also conducted research on teaching the deaf. They would continue to work together for many years, also later traveling to the area of Lappmarken in the summer of 1866, where they instructed the deaf. Heikel became the first female teacher for the deaf in Finland. She worked voluntarily for many years without receiving pay.


School for the Deaf

After the family moved from Turku to Pedersöre in 1861, Heikel and her father founded a school for the deaf the same year on the rectory property at his expense; her sister also taught there. According to , "Anna and her sister Selma were responsible for teaching in the beginning before a deaf teacher, Lorentz Eklund, was hired. Anna then also served as director of the school." The school was visited by Alopaeus a year later, who noted a great need in the area. Around this time, Heikel and her brother Viktor also studied folk schools in Stockholm. A separate building was built in 1863; the school's operations were also taken over by the state that year. The school had over one hundred students in the early 1880s. Due to a lack of space, it was moved to nearby Jakobstad in 1887 and became a boarding school. The school was eventually closed in 1932.


Educational methods

Along with the school for the deaf in Porvoo (), which operated from 1846 to 1991, it was one of two schools for the deaf for the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. At a time when oralism was common in deaf education, Heikel did not support its use but rather supported the use of sign language. The school in Jakobstad () took in students from the school in Porvoo who had not learned spoken Swedish. There they were educated in Finland-Swedish sign language and written Swedish.


Contribution to the Baptist movement

Together with her family and others, Heikel played a central role in the beginnings of the Baptist movement in Finland. At the time, all religious gatherings outside of those of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland were forbidden by the Conventicle Act, "used to restrict the pietistic revival movements in Finland". In 1859, a number of members of the growing Baptist movement in Åland faced hearings in front of the Bishop's Chapter at the Turku Cathedral. Among the Lutheran clergy present was Henrik Heikel, who took an interest in the Baptists' beliefs and spoke to them to learn more, although he did not convert. After moving to Pedersöre in 1860, the Heikel family maintained a connection with the Baptists in Åland. After Henrik Heikel's death in 1867, both Anna and her brother Viktor were baptized in Stockholm by Anders Wiberg; Netta was also baptized. After her return, she began to hold meetings and share material on Baptist teachings. Heikel and her circles were influenced by the teachings of Carl Olof Rosenius and the '' Nyevangelism'' () movement. The family received a visit from a Baptist pastor who had been at the hearing with Henrik Heikel ten years earlier; together they held meetings and the pastor's preaching led to more conversions. Four members of the Heikel family, along with nine others, founded a Swedish-language Baptist church in Jakobstad in 1870. At one point she was called to a hearing at the
cathedral chapter According to both Catholic and Anglican canon law, a cathedral chapter is a college of clerics ( chapter) formed to advise a bishop and, in the case of a vacancy of the episcopal see in some countries, to govern the diocese during the vacancy. In ...
regarding her conversion; there she was defended by Alopaeus, who, while not Baptist himself, supported her beliefs. Her beliefs were also controversial in the community and forced her to leave teaching for a time. Anna and Netta would eventually leave the Baptists and join the .


Sunday school

In 1861, Heikel and her sister Sofia Antoinetta (Netta) founded one of the first free church Sunday schools in the country. Later, while in Stockholm in 1868, she also learned more about the Swedish Sunday school system. The Swedish Sunday school movement had begun to grow significantly in recent years in part due to the work of Mathilda Foy, Betty Ehrenborg, and Per Palmqvist, who in turn modeled them after Methodist George Scott's work in London. She and Netta began to hold Sunday school classes at the school in 1868. They soon encouraged their friends, Miss Hellman and Miss Humble, to start a Sunday school in Vaasa. She continued to teach Sunday school even after later leaving the Baptist church for the .


Temperance movement

Swedish Baptist missionary and colonel
Oscar Broady Oscar Broady (May 28, 1832 – March 13, 1922) was a petty officer in the Swedish navy who emigrated to the United States. During the Civil War he rose to the command of a brigade in the Union Army. After returning to Sweden as a Baptist missionary ...
held temperance talks in Vaasa in the late 1870s. The movement first spread to Anna and Netta's friends, the Hellmans, in Vaasa, and was soon taken up by the Heikel sisters. They formed the country's first teetotalism association in Jakobstad in 1877, attended by exclusively Baptists, including a number of children; the association caused so much controversy in the town that some students were expelled and the two were forced to leave their teaching jobs.


Death and legacy

Heikel died 3 April 1907 in Jakobstad. A plaque dedicated to Heikel was unveiled there in 2014.


See also

* Baptists in Finland * Deaf education *
History of institutions for deaf education The establishment of schools and institutions specializing in deaf education has a history spanning back across multiple centuries. They utilized a variety of instructional approaches and philosophies. The manner in which the language barrier is h ...


References


Further reading

*Backlund-Enges, Susanna: ''.'' 2001. Ã…bo Akademi.


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heikel, Anna 1838 births 1907 deaths People from Turku Swedish-speaking Finns Finnish Baptists Converts to Baptist denominations Religion in Finland Deaf culture in Finland Deaf education Education in Finland Educators of the deaf Finnish temperance activists