Anna Zahn was born on April 28, 1800 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. She is a daughter of the Pietist Anna Schlatter from the Bernet merchant family. Anna is brought up in the faith of her mother, which includes going to church on Sundays, daily table and evening prayers, and daily Bible study. Anna is raised piously, and temporarily joins an enthusiastic religious movement with two sisters, from which the girls are released by their mother, however. After school, Anna goes to Geneva - against her mother's wishes - to train as a teacher. In her first diary she writes: "How beautiful our homeland is, the lake, the mountains - an air in which I can finally breathe freely".
After her education, Anna goes to Germany to Breslau as a tutor to the von der Groeben family, where she spends a few happy years.
In 1825 she met Franz Ludwig Zahn, whose brother Adolf was married to her sister Kleophea, in the house of the Count of Stolberg-Wernigerode.
Anna has to return to St. Gallen when her mother falls seriously ill. She
On July 1, 1827, she married Franz Ludwig Zahn in Berlin. In 1832, the family found its final home in Moers on the Lower Rhine. Anna gives birth to eleven children, to whom she is a loving mother. With the day of her wedding, Anna begins to write a diary, which she keeps almost until her death. This diary not only provides a deep insight into the life of the Zahn family, but it also gives a glimpse into the life of a Christian, middle-class family in the 1st half of the 19th century, which is not often found. Anna Zahn dies on January 8, 1853 on the Fild estate. She finds her final resting place in the Zahn family cemetery. She is the first family member to be buried there.
(Hans Zahn, September 2017)
