Turnen around the World represents an international effort by an assemblage of prominent sport historians to detail and assess the worldwide scope, effects, and residual influences of the German Turnen movement over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A male nationalistic movement based on gymnastics and other physical activities established in response to the Napoleonic wars became even more political in the German Revolution of 1848. Refugees, colonizers, and immigrants spread the political and cultural aspects of Turnen throughout the world thereafter, with varying results that still resonate today. In some cases, Turnen societies resisted assimilation and took an isolationist stance retaining their own culture and language. In others they gradually assimilated, adapting and adopting the norms, standards, and values of the host cultures while establishing educational and physical culture practices that endured. In still other areas a nominal, but peripheral effect influenced local physical practices. Within Germany, the Turners remain the most substantial physical culture association in the country with more than five million members, around 70 percent being females.
This book represents an international effort by an assemblage of prominent sport historians to assess the worldwide scope, effects, and the residual influences of the German Turnen movement over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Introduction, Annette R. Hofmann and Gerald Gems
Part 1: Germany
Chapter 1: Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) - An Introduction to his Life
and Work, Josef Ulkotte
Chapter 2: German Turners in the Revolution of 1848-49 and its Aftermath,
Michael Krüger
Chapter 3: The "March into the Third Reich" and the Temporary End of the Free
Turner Movement, Michael Krüger
Chapter 4: Women in the German Turner Movement: Beginnings, Developments and
Changes, Gertrud Pfister and Annette R. Hofmann
Part 2: Europe
Chapter 5: The Turner Movement in Tyrol (Austria) until 1919, Karl Graf
Chapter 6: Karl Völker: The Swiss Turnfather and the Founding of the London
Turnverein, Michael Krüger
Part 3: The Americas: United States, Canada, and Brazil
Chapter 7: 175 Years of the American Turners: An Overview, Annette R.
Hofmann
Chapter 8: Between a Rock and a Hard Place´: German-American Turners and
Turnvereins in the Southern Confederacy of Civil War America, 1861-1865,
Robert Knight Barney
Chapter 9: Turner Ascendency in Rochester, NY through Song, Spirit, and Sport
in the late 19th Century, Alec S. Hurley
Chapter 10: The German Turners and the Taming of Radicalism in Chicago,
Gerald Gems
Chapter 11: German-Brazilian Turner Societies in Brazil´s South (1858-1938),
Evelise Amgarten Quitzau and Lothar Wieser
Chapter 12: German-Canadian Turnvereins: Origin and Evolution 1855-1875,
Wendy Gray
Part 4: Australia
Chapter 13: The Turner Movement in Australia: A Historiographical Assessment,
Rob Hess
Part 5: Japan
Chapter 14: Influences of German Turnen in Japan, Toshi Ichiba
Part 6: Afrika
Chapter 15: Turnen in the German Colony of Southwest Africa, Annette R.
Hofmann
Glossary
About the Authors
Annette R. Hofmann is professor of sports studies at the Ludwigsburg University of Education in Germany.
Gerald Gems is past president of the North American Society for Sport History.
