4/17/2024 0 Comments Playspace mover issuesWhen Jahn was released six years later, he was forbidden from living anywhere near a secondary school or university. Jahn was arrested, and the regime implemented a ban on gymnastics that remained in place in most of Prussia until it was lifted by Prussia’s King Frederick William IV in 1842. Prussian authorities implemented the Carlsbad Decrees, which created a police state, censored the press and involved heavy surveillance of oppositional movements. Worse, they demanded a representational government, a constitution, a unified Germany and universal suffrage (for landowners). Prussia’s conservative aristocratic regime saw Jahn’s young gymnastic acolytes as a threat they were bohemian and emphasized the informal/fraternal “du” form of address (as opposed to the formal “sie”) when speaking German. His devoted following was overtly political: Jahn framed their physical training as preparation to fight foes foreign or domestic if needs be. Open-air clubs (Turnplatz) were guided by the “ four Fs” in German, which translated roughly to “hardy, pious, cheerful, free.” The German gymnasts were also unusual for their time, as they eventually encompassed both men and women in their ranks.Ī political liberal with nationalistic fervor, Jahn demanded freedom of speech and a unified Germany free from foreign influences such as the control it faced under the First French Empire. We don’t have video of how Jahn conducted himself, but he must have been formidably charismatic because calisthenics evolved over the decades to become something of a cult for both the working and middle classes, promoting physical skill and strength, along with tactical virtues like large group organization. Like a 19th-century Tyler Durden, he set about creating a series of clubs ( turnverein) for practicing gymnastics ( turnen), and became known as the Turnvater (literally “Father of the Gymnasts,” partially because of his apparatus and technique innovations, but more so his paternal investment in his students’ moral development). Brooding on Napoleon’s shattering of Germany into a series of loosely connected states ruled by autocrats, Jahn became obsessed with the notion that Teutonic youth lacked the deep psychophysical reserves necessary to hold their national sovereignty intact. But since he was also a fervent patriot and veteran, he saw gymnastics as a crucible to forge a sense of solidarity and civic duty in the general population. Jahn inherited this tradition, being a secondary school teacher. As a result, European gymnastics had been slowly evolving, vaguely linked with the moral development of the young. Since the Enlightenment, educational reformers had sought to revive the Greek gymnastic ideal, summarized by the Roman poet Juvenal as mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body). How his instruction of formal exercise became so frightening to local authorities is worth examining in our time. Despite his relative obscurity in the annals of history, Jahn invented much of what is regarded today as modern gymnastics, systematizing elements like the vaulting horse, rings and balance beam that grace mainstream television screens every four years during the Olympics. His crime wasn’t suspect theological treatises but teaching gymnastics and calisthenics. In 1819, philologist and theologian Friedrich Ludwig Jahn was jailed by Prussian authorities. Colm O’Shea is a clinical associate professor with New York University’s Expository Writing Program.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |