Karin Åhlin

Karin Dorothea Wilhelmina Åhlin (25 November 1830 – September 30, 1899) was a Swedish educator. She was the founder and director of the Åhlinska skolan in Stockholm, and its principal from 1847 to 1899.

Biography Karin Åhlin was born and raised in Stockholm as the eldest daughter of Major Paul Pehr Åhlin and Wilhelmina Gustafva Norberg. After the death of her mother in 1847, she was left with the responsibility of raising and educating her younger siblings at the age of seventeen. At this point, the normal profession for a middle-class girl in need to support herself was that of a teacher, and she started to give lessons in her home to not only her siblings but also to paying pupils. She was an appreciated educator and was able to accept more and more pupils, some of them as guests in her home, an enterprise which gradually developed into the expanding Åhlinska skolan. During the expanding of the school, she initially employed her sisters as teachers as they reached adulthood, and eventually also educated teachers she could provide a proper salary.