Abstract
The purpose of this article is to analyze and compare two internationally renowned Danish Gymnastics teachers, Jørgen Peter Muller and Niels Bukh. Whereas Muller’s home gymnastics had a cosmopolitan agenda that appealed to everyone regardless of ethnic origin, including many Jews, Bukh’s gymnastics increasingly became embedded in a right-wing nationalist frame of reference. Muller created an individual system of home gymnastics with a focus on health by means of exercises and the cleansing of the body that included a cold shower. In contrast, Bukh’s system was a collective form of gymnastics that emphasised the beauty of the young body. Common to both of them, however, was propagation of sexual liberation, which in Muller’s case focused on the naked heterosexual body’s manifestations in the sunlight and the fresh air. By contrast, Bukh was homosexual and through his aesthetic gaze he encouraged well-trained and sweaty young men to show their muscular upper body in touch-tight choreographies wearing only boxer shorts. It is the main thesis of the article that the contribution of sport to sexual liberation from late Victorianism’s firm grip is far greater than hitherto assumed.
Highlights
In this article, I will conduct a comparative analysis of two world-renowned Danish gymnastics teachers J.P
Muller created an individual system of home gymnastics with a focus on health by means of exercises and the cleansing of the body that included a cold shower
Nazism’s selection of a strongly anti-homosexual profile led to internal problems within the Nazi party—an organisation built up around men spending a great deal of time around each other, separated from women and children and, with the enormous priority set for sports and paramilitary training, in constant close physical contact with one another
Summary
Abstract The purpose of this article is to analyze and compare two internationally renowned Danish Gymnastics teachers, Jørgen Peter Muller and Niels Bukh. Bukh’s system was a collective form of gymnastics that emphasised the beauty of the young body Common to both of them, was propagation of sexual liberation, which in Muller’s case focused on the naked heterosexual body’s manifestations in the sunlight and the fresh air. Bukh was homosexual and through his aesthetic gaze he encouraged well-trained and sweaty young men to show their muscular upper body in touch-tight choreographies wearing only boxer shorts. It is the main thesis of the article that the contribution of sport to sexual liberation from late Victorianism’s firm grip is far greater than hitherto assumed
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