Gymnastics, Physical Education, Sport, and Christianity in Germany

Abstract

Germany is both the country of origin of Protestantism and of Turnerism, which has led to a specific concept of national gymnastics. In 2017, the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther´s act of nailing his theses to the door of the Church of Wittenberg (on 31 October 1517) was celebrated. About 300 hundred years later, Ludwig Jahn, son of a Protestant minister, started to run a gymnastics ground at a park in Berlin, where young boys and students were educated in ‘body and mind’ according to Jahn’s slogan (which later became the brand of the German Turner movement) frisch, fromm, fröhlich, frei (‘fresh, pious, cheerful, free’). The notion of piety has been widely discussed by contemporary gymnasts, because even then, some regarded piety as old-fashioned and in fact incompatible with a free and enlightened world. The purpose of this paper is to consider the Christian impact on German gymnastics and sport since the beginning of a civil movement of body culture in clubs and societies in the nineteenth century. The paper is based on a wide range of academic research and other selected sources.