German Turners
Johann Cristoph Friedrich Guts Muths is known as the grandfather of German Physical Education. He was 27 years old in 1786 when he began teaching physical education at the famous Schnepfenthal Educational Institute, and he stayed for 50 years. The initial curriculum was a combination of knightly exercises and Greek gymnastics, and it provided a basis for his book, Gymnastics for Youth, published in 1793. This work later influenced a wave of physical culture that helped transform Germany in its struggle against Napoleon. In Guts Muths' Generic Classification of Exercises, the perennial content areas of restorative, martial, and pedagogical are apparent.
The beginning of the 19th Century saw a weak and divided Germany with hundreds of independent sovereignties that were no match for Napoleon's mighty army. Friedrich Jahn was not yet 30 years of age when he rushed to help defend Prussia at the Battle of Jena in 1806. He arrived to witness overwhelming defeat, the loss of almost half of his beloved homeland, and its eventual occupation by 150,000 French soldiers.
Jahn spent his youth as an outsider to the inertia, provincialism, drinking, and dueling that dominated much of the academic environment. He was dismissed from most of the many universities in which he studied, and he never finished formal training. His real education came from wandering throughout the countryside and coming to love his troubled nation with a fervor that aroused all he met along the way.
Turnfather Jahn
Between his retreat from Jena and the 1813 War of Liberation, which eventually led to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Jahn began teaching at Graue Kloster, a boys school in Berlin. Borrowing heavily from Guts Muths' theories, he planted the seeds for a system of gymnastics that transformed German physical culture.
To Jahn, gymnastics were not merely the means of augmenting physical powers, but a tool for achieving political goals as well. German freedom and strength revolved upon the youth of the state and, therefore, the supreme aim of physical education was to develop sturdy citizens possessing a love of their homeland and the aggregate strength to throw off the rule of the oppressor.
A wave of patriotism followed the defeat at Jena, and Jahn's call for action made him a national hero. By 1814, he was even receiving a government salary, and the Turnvereine (Gymnastic Societies) grew rapidly. Jahn had inspired a nation of citizen-soldiers. After Germany was liberated, the Turners joined the call for more personal and political freedom. The government reacted. Many Germans had hoped that Napoleon's defeat would be followed by national unity under constitutional rule. However, the monarchs organized under Austrian Prince Metternich; and the Turnvereine, along with other "demagogic associations," was banned and forced underground by government edicts.
The failure of the bloody revolutionary movement in 1848 forced thousands of Germans to flee their homeland. Many chose America, and in that same year the first American Turnvereine opened in Cincinnati. Twenty-two Turner Societies were operating in the United States by 1851. Ten years later, the Turners, vehemently opposed to slavery, were among the first to volunteer as units in the Northern Army. Of an estimated 10,000 active Turners, approximately 6,000 enlisted.
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In 1885, Herman J. Koehler, an accomplished German-American Turner, was appointed Master of the Sword at West Point Military Academy. He had studied in the Turnvereine throughout his youth and graduated in 1882 from the Milwaukee Normal School of Physical Training, a Turner school. At that time, the Normal School was directed by his uncle, George Brosius, who also served as Superintendent of Physical Training in the public schools of Milwaukee from 1875 to 1883.
Koehler distinguished himself as a teacher and soldier. A report to the Board of Visitors in 1889 stated:
We confess that it was exceedingly difficult to believe that the gymnastic exercise performed by the fourth class could be the result of only one year of practice under the instruction by Professor Koehler. The feats of agility were simply wonderful; they are valuable chiefly as evidence of sound, muscular, trained bodies . . . . Professor Koehler is an accomplished teacher.
The Koehler system had four main functions: "To build the men up physically, to wake them up mentally, to fill them with enthusiasm, and to discipline them". Koehler believed that mechanical proficiency through physical training is essential for self-reliance, courage, and personal discipline; he further argued that the discipline of the individual determines the discipline of the mass. He defined discipline as:
the voluntary, intelligent, coordinated and cheerful subordination of every individual in an equal degree with every other individual of the mass to which he belongs, and of which he is an interdependent and not an independent unit, through which the object of the mass can be attained.
The relationship between physical training and discipline, according to Koehler, was not sufficiently appreciated in or out of the American military. He further noted:
The experience of the author, stretching over a lifetime at the academy, but particularly that gained in training several hundred thousand men, directly and indirectly, in which men of every walk of life, in every part of our country were involved, proved conclusively that the disciplinary value of military physical training equaled, if it did not surpass its purely physiological value.
In 1892, the Koehler system was adopted for use throughout the Army. Koehler's martial arts emphasis is apparent in the combatives, rifle drills, and bayonet training of his system; but he also stressed restorative exercise to diminish heart action, regulate respiration, and restore normal condition. Sports and games were also included in the Koehler program, but he recommended they be viewed as "recreational and only those activities should be indulged in which it is possible to employ large numbers at the same time. It is best to select those activities in which the element of personal contact predominates".
As in the Greek concept of physical education, the recurring and ever-changing relationship between restorative, martial and pedagogical content also appears throughout the German system. Similarly, education of and through the physical were equally valued in the German Turner system.