Zahn

Zahn a German philanthropist, was a mason of Bunzlau, who wandered about as an orphan in childhood, and learned to read at the age of twenty-four. He carried on a little school in his own house for the benefit of orphans. He made the first movement towards the establishment of an orphan-house in Bunzlau, and went to Berlin to solicit the royal sanction. The corner-stone was laid in 1755. Zahn became the first superintendent, but died of the plague in 1756. The institution was conducted from that time by Ernest Gottlieb Woltersdorf. See Hagenbach, Hist. of the Church in the 18th and 19th Centuries, 1:146.