ABSTRACT
Dorette Wilke was born, a subject of the German Empire, on 14 June 1867, at Stendal, Magdeburg, Bezirk, Prussia, of Prussian parents Friedrich and Dorothea Wilke. In spite of many enquiries, little is known of her early life or how she came to England. We do know, however, that she arrived in England in 1885 a penniless, delicate, sensitive, but receptive, teenager, suffering from lateral curvature of the spine. Acting on a doctor’s advice, she took up gymnastics to effect a cure; her professional career had been determined. Enthusiasm for gymnastics led her to enrol at the fashionable Training School of Adolf A Stempel’s Gymnasium, Albany Street, Regent’s Park, London. Here she received two years free training in the theory and practice of all published systems of physical education, together with lessons in fencing under French masters and sixteenth century fencing under Captain Alfred Hutton, complemented by private tuition in anatomy and physiology. Her teaching practice was very varied, from infants’ classes to classes for elderly ladies. After gaining a First Class Diploma at the end of the course and by way of repayment, she taught unsalaried for a year at Stempel’s and its connected schools. ‘I am so grateful, you see, for what gymnastics have done for me, that I want to make them a means of doing good to as many people as possible’.
