A guide to the history of physical education

By the Prussian cabinet order of June 6, 1842, already referred to (page 101), physical training was “formally recognized as a necessary and indispensable part of male education.” Minister Eichhorn, who was charged with putting this decree into effect, received that same summer a visitor from Switzerland who for eight years had been teaching gymnastics to boys and girls of all ages, as a regular branch of their school work, and who therefore seemed to have solved successfully, on a small scale, the problem of incorporating the subject into the school plan. He was asked by the Minister to submit in writing a statement of the measures which in his judgment would accomplish the same result in the Prussian state, and the reply to this request, dated at Burgdorf on the 18th of the following October, was contained in some “Thoughts on the method to be followed in making gymnastics an integral element in popular education.”⁠[64] The steps therein advocated have since been taken, in part at least, by almost every German state, and the author, Adolf Spiess, now enjoys the undisputed title of “founder of school gymnastics in Germany and of gymnastics for girls in particular.”

Spiess was a native of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and born February 3, 1810, in Lauterbach, a small town on the northeastern slope of the Vogelsberg. His father, Johann Balthasar Spiess (1782-1841), himself the son of a Thuringian farmer and master smith, had first prepared himself for a position as teacher in the elementary schools, but after some years of professional experience at Frankfort-on-the-Main decided upon further study, and so completed a course in theology at the University of Giessen, and immediately after passing his examination, in 1807, became teacher and sub-rector at the Latin school in Lauterbach. Thither he soon brought as bride Luise Werner, of Saarbrücken, first met in Frankfurt, and Adolf was the oldest of their five children. In 1811 the father accepted a pastoral position in the Evangelical Lutheran church at Offenbach, across the Main from Frankfurt, and in addition to his clerical duties opened a private school which prepared for the upper classes of the Gymnasium (higher classical school) or for a mercantile career. Ten years before this he had observed the methods in use at Schnepfenthal, and made the acquaintance of GutsMuths and other teachers there, renewed by frequent later visits. It was therefore natural that one feature of the daily program should be gymnastics, as described and practised by GutsMuths—walking the balance beam, jumping, running, climbing, throwing, skating, swimming, etc., and games of all sorts. Every week throughout the year there were also excursions with teachers, and dancing lessons were given in the winter months.

Adolf entered this school at the age of six or less. A few years later, in 1819, Fritz Hessemer, just back from the University of Giessen, made the pupils acquainted with the new Jahn gymnastics, and parallel bars and a horizontal bar were now added to the equipment. In 1824 some of the boys organized a little society for the purpose of practising gymnastics regularly outside of school hours. They met in the private garden Turnplatz of Hofrath A. André, using Jahn’s “Deutsche Turnkunst” as a guide and inspiration, and soon afterwards entered into friendly relations with other turners in Hanau, a few miles to the east, with whom joint excursions on foot to the Taunus Range were made in 1826 and the following year.

In the spring or summer of 1828 Spiess went to the University of Giessen to pursue the study of theology. He at once joined the Burschenschaft, which had been organized ten years previously and now concealed itself under the name Waffenverbindung, and his active habits at once took the form of assiduous practice in fencing, the favorite student exercise.⁠[65] Before the end of the year he had become proficient in the art. There were also many excursions with friends to neighboring peaks and castles, and an acquaintance has borne witness to the skill he displayed in all forms of physical activity—riding, swimming, skating, dancing, and gymnastics. Music and drawing, too, for which he possessed both taste and talent, absorbed a portion of his leisure. With other students he left Giessen at Easter of 1829 and journeyed on foot across the Vogelsberg to Schnepfenthal, where as a schoolboy he had met GutsMuths nine years before, and then on to Halle, there to continue his theological studies in the university. An excursion through the Harz Mountains later in the same season was made the occasion of a visit to Jahn. In Halle there were opportunities for renewed practice on the horizontal bar, the parallel bars, and the horse, and fencing, too, was not neglected; but the greatest interest was excited by certain outdoor games. For these they used to gather twice a week, and often to the number of a hundred or more, in Passendorf, singing and playing together until nightfall. About Christmas time of the same year Spiess went up to Berlin for some months. This gave an opportunity to frequent Eiselen’s private gymnasium, and though that master himself was confined to his home by illness the young student saw and learned many new exercises from Philipp Feddern, his assistant.

For a year or more following the spring of 1830 Spiess was again in Giessen, and active in the life of its Burschenschaft.⁠[66] He now began to give regular instruction in gymnastics, first to a dozen boys on a garden Turnplatz, and then, as interest grew, to nearly 150 in one of the city parks; and already he was modifying the traditional method by gathering the entire number into one band at the commencement of each period for various simple exercises performed in rhythm as they stood or marched, or for running and jumping under the leadership of a single teacher. But the Hessian authorities were on the lookout for agitation looking toward a united Germany, and had already given notice to the University that no student who was affiliated with forbidden organizations, like the Burschenschaft, would be admitted to the regular examinations. The July revolution in France, however, exerted a stimulating influence. Early in 1831 the local association allied itself with the general German Burschenschaft, and members were openly displaying signs of their sympathy with the radical element. Under such circumstances any revival of the old Turnen was certain to be viewed with apprehension. In the spring of 1831 the former prohibition was renewed, and there could be no more exercising by groups in public. After some months of private study at Sprendlingen, his father’s new parish, Spiess returned to Giessen and successfully passed his examinations in theology, April 2, 1832. He then became private tutor in the family of the Hessian Count Solms-Rödelheim, at Assenheim.

Before taking this position, or on one of his visits home, he received a foretaste of what awaited him if he remained in his native state. A friendly magistrate informed his father one evening that if the young man was found in the house on the following morning he would be subject to arrest. Spiess therefore left at once, and reached Assenheim in safety. The next year (1833) a newspaper notice brought word to Sprendlingen that the city of Burgdorf, in Switzerland, was in search of someone who could take charge of physical training in its elementary school. The clergyman, recognizing that a sojourn in a neutral country was the only safe course for his son, in view of existing political conditions, at once wrote to propose Adolf for the place. Word came in August that he had been appointed teacher of gymnastics, singing, writing, and drawing.⁠[67] On October 5 he left home with his youngest brother, Hermann, and traveling by way of Basel reached Burgdorf on the 21st, ready to begin work in the alien state which was to be his fosterland for fifteen busy and fruitful years (1833-1848).

The city authorities had erected a new, attractive, and roomy building for the school, and now placed at its head Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852), already widely known for his book “The Education of Man” (1826), and Heinrich Langethal (1792-1879) and Wilhelm Middendorf (1793-1853), who had been associated with Froebel for fourteen years in his school in the Thuringian village of Keilhau and after the few years in Burgdorf were again to be his helpers when the first kindergarten was opened at Blankenburg, another Thuringian town. All three had been members of Lützow’s Free Corps during the War of Liberation, and through residence in Berlin had come under the influence of Jahn and his work on the Hasenheide Turnplatz. Spiess found these colleagues ready to coöperate with him at every step, and all worked together in perfect harmony to give the broadest possible training to the children under their care. The open-air gymnasium, originally laid out after the Jahn plan in 1824, and beautifully situated in a grove near the left bank of the Emme, overlooked to the east by wooded sandstone cliffs beyond the stream and on the west by an ancient castle, was now doubled in size and entirely refitted in accordance with the wishes of the new teacher. In the castle itself, where Pestalozzi had conducted his school for five years (1799-1804) and written “How Gertrude Teaches Her Children” (1801), a hall was equipped for winter use. In the spring of 1834 the boys of the school, including even the youngest, began to receive systematic instruction in gymnastics for two successive hours on three afternoons of each week, and before long the interest of the girls, also, was awakened and special classes were formed and suitable exercises devised to meet their needs. There were frequent excursions on foot into the surrounding country, and once a year, in the autumn, an exhibition or Turnfest was held. The new discipline, which reached pupils of both sexes and all ages, was regarded as an essential part of their school training.

It was not long before the attention of the cantonal school authorities was attracted to the Burgdorf experiment, and as a result Spiess received in 1835 the added appointment of teacher of gymnastics in the normal school (Landschullehrer-Seminar) at Münchenbuchsee, ten miles to the southwest, where in addition to eighty children in the model school he found about a hundred pupils. He also undertook a similar task at various other schools in the neighborhood, among them one for girls in Kirchberg, and for his own pleasure and further training joined a small gymnastic society of adults (Männerturnverein) in Burgdorf, visited the Turners in Bern and Hofwyl, and attended the annual Swiss Turnfeste held in Bern (1839), Basel (1841), and Zurich (1842).

Experience with all grades of pupils had proved to Spiess that the material and methods of Jahn’s “Deutsche Turnkunst” were not sufficient for his needs. Little by little he began therefore to develop and test new groups of exercises, and first of all what he called “Free Exercises,” or those which require either no apparatus at all, or only such as can be carried in the hands. They were intended to secure ready control and graceful carriage of the body under ordinary conditions, while the pupil was standing or walking on the usual supporting surface, and differed in this particular from the forms commonly practised on the old Turnplatz. The attempt to instruct large numbers of pupils at once in these free exercises led to the elaboration of another group, the class exercises in marching (Ordnungsübungen), by means of which the entire mass was made to move as one individual, and in this way discipline and order were improved, since each pupil learned to handle himself as part of the whole, and any desired arrangement of the units could be promptly secured. The next step was a review of all the gymnastic material in the effort to devise a more satisfactory classification than the one adopted in the books of GutsMuths, the “Deutsche Turnkunst,” and Eiselen’s “Turntafeln” (1837). The result of this study was the publication in 1840 of the first part (Free Exercises) of his “System of Gymnastics” (Lehre der Turnkunst),⁠[68] followed by a second (Hanging Exercises) in 1842, and a third (Stemmübungen or supporting exercises, including balancing and vaulting) in 1843.

In the summer of 1842 Spiess returned to Germany, drawn by the signs of approaching gymnastic revival in Prussia and the desire to discuss his own views with other men of like interests. He found Massmann,⁠[69] at Munich, too firmly wedded to the Turnen of student days to receive with any sympathy the proposed innovations; but Jahn, whose guest he was for two days in Freyburg, and Eiselen, whom he saw at a watering-place near Berlin, were more cordial in their attitude. The visit to Minister Eichhorn (August 10), and the formal statement of his ideas regarding the essential features of a state system of physical training for the schools which followed it, have been mentioned already in the opening paragraph. Two years before Spiess had married a former pupil, Marie Buri, and the need of finding a larger and more remunerative field of usefulness no doubt had much to do with the journey to Berlin; but the summons of Massmann to the Prussian capital in 1843 put an end to all hopes in that direction.

Attempts to secure a footing in Darmstadt and in Basel met at first with no better success; but afterwards he received from the latter city a call to the position of teacher of gymnastics and history in two higher schools for boys—the Gymnasium and the Realschule—and at the orphan asylum, entering upon these duties in May of 1844. The following March he was relieved of the work in history in order that he might have time for instruction in gymnastics at the public girls’ school (Töchterschule), and preparations were also made for progressive improvement in physical training at all the city schools. Free at last to devote all his thought to the one subject, he finished in 1846 the fourth and final part (Class Exercises in Marching, Gemein- or Ordnungsübungen) of his “System of Gymnastics,” and the next year was able to publish the first volume of a practical manual for teachers (Turnbuch für Schulen),⁠[70] containing graded series of exercises suitable for boys and girls between the ages of six and ten. The second volume, covering the ages from ten to sixteen, was completed in 1851, after he had left Basel and returned to his native land.

In May of 1848 Spiess accepted an offer from Minister von Gagern of Hesse, and moved to Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy, to undertake the task of introducing gymnastics into the schools of that state, beginning with the higher schools and the common schools of such communities as were prepared to take the step at once. He was also to train the requisite teaching force, and afterwards to superintend their work. The salary of the new “Oberstudien-Assessor” was fixed at two thousand gulden. Lessons were immediately begun with classes in two secondary schools for boys (the Gymnasium and the Realschule) and in the higher school for girls (Mädchen- or Töchterschule), and in a large garden lying near the center of the city the hall of a former public house was converted into a gymnasium by setting up along one side rows of vertical poles and horizontal bars and ladders, and adding to these a giant stride, parallel bars, bucks, jump stands and jumping ropes, stilts, and poles for use in vaulting. A new gymnasium or Turnhaus, surrounded by a double Turnplatz and containing a hall one hundred by sixty feet which could be changed into two rooms by means of a movable partition, was opened for use June 14, 1852, with classes of boys and girls from various schools. It was the first building of the kind in Germany. Public exhibitions the next year and again in 1855 acquainted parents, teachers, the grand ducal family, and the state and city authorities with the nature of his work, and increased their interest in it.

A four weeks’ normal course was given in February of 1849 to about thirty teachers in elementary and higher schools, most of them from Darmstadt, but one from Dresden and ten from Mainz, Offenbach, Worms, and other Hessian towns. Instruction was chiefly by means of model classes, conducted by Spiess in their presence, and after observing these the teachers themselves were given an opportunity to practice the same exercises. No other formal courses were given in Hesse, but in response to an invitation he took charge of a similar one in Oldenburg, capital of the Grand Duchy of the same name, in the fall of 1851. He also visited many places in Hesse in the interest of physical training, and teachers from all parts of the state came to Darmstadt from time to time during the next few years to become familiar with his method. To all these he gladly rendered whatever assistance they desired. A list of foreign visitors during the period 1852-1854 has been preserved, and on it are found the names of educators from Sweden⁠[71], Belgium (1), Switzerland (3), Austria (4), Prussia (6), Saxony (2), Württemberg (2), Baden (5), Oldenburg (4), Frankfort-on-the-Main (8), and others from the smaller German states. More than half of the number remained long enough to receive practical instruction under Spiess, and to this group belong Nyblæus, Kawerau and Kluge from the Central Institute (Royal Normal School of Gymnastics) in Berlin, and Moritz Kloss, Director of the Normal School of Gymnastics in Dresden. Another list covering the same period shows that the Spiess method had been, or was about to be, adopted in more than thirty-five schools in ten cities outside of Hesse, including Berlin, Neurippen, Breslau, Frankfort, Dresden, Oldenburg, Vienna, and Bern, besides Basel and Burgdorf.

Failing health compelled Spiess to interrupt, in the summer of 1855, his hitherto unceasing activity. Tuberculosis had developed in the lung wounded during his student days, and attempts to stop its progress by residence in the Taunus and for two years at Vevey, on Lake Geneva, proved unavailing. He returned to Darmstadt, visiting the Turnhaus there for the last time in the fall of 1857, and died the following year, on the 9th of May.

The chief service which he rendered to physical training in Germany, and wherever German influence has been felt, was the attempt to make it a part of the school life. The Turnplatz was not to exist side by side with the school, as a counterpoise to the exclusively mental training of the latter, and in charge of some independent individual or society; but the school should concern itself with the whole life of the young, physical as well as mental, and gymnastics, recognized by the state as a means of education, should be thoroughly incorporated and treated on an equality with other branches of instruction and discipline, enjoying the same rights and conforming to the same pedagogic principles. It should therefore be made a required exercise, from which nothing except a physician’s certificate of defect or illness would excuse any pupil. In addition to the open-air gymnasium and the playground the community or the state would have to provide and equip closed halls, in or near the school building, so that instruction need not be interrupted by season or weather. Elementary classes require an hour each day for gymnastics and games. Less time might suffice for the older children, but the lesson periods, in either case, should be included within the school hours, or stand in immediate proximity to them. Periodical examinations in gymnastics coming at the same time with general examinations, and annually recurring exhibitions or Turnfeste were to be held. Those who teach the subject must be educators by profession, and closely identified with the life of the school, receiving their training in this branch, as in all others, at the normal schools and the universities, or in part at institutions intended for that purpose exclusively—the normal schools of gymnastics. In elementary schools instruction would be in the hands of the grade- or class-teacher, and in higher schools there should be special teachers of gymnastics, just as in the case of mathematics, or languages, or science. The exercise-material must be arranged in progressive steps suitable for the different school grades, and a series of manuals prepared to fit the different conditions and needs in country and city schools, in common schools, higher schools for boys, and schools for girls.

In preparation for the process of sorting out and distributing to each sex and age appropriate forms of exercise Spiess thought it necessary first of all to collect, analyze, and classify the whole mass of possible positions and movements of the body. This he endeavored to do in his “System of Gymnastics” (Die Lehre der Turnkunst), but without seeking at the same time to separate the useful from that which is unessential or undesirable. The book is not intended, therefore, as a practical guide for the teacher. That function was reserved for his second work, the Turnbuch für Schulen, which has been a mine of instruction and suggestion for authors of later manuals. Here he leads gradually from the simplest exercises to the most difficult combinations, pointing out what material is to be used for each sex and age, and explaining the method to be pursued during the lesson hour. He devised new forms of apparatus on which the whole class, or a considerable fraction of it, could work at once under the teacher’s eye and at his command. The “Free Exercises” and the “Class Exercises in Marching” (Ordnungs- or Gemeinübungen) which he elaborated were a fresh contribution to the stock of German gymnastics, and with his simpler exercises on apparatus supplied material for girls and younger boys. His musical gifts⁠[72] rendered possible that rhythmical arrangement of the free exercises which has continued to be so conspicuous a feature in the teaching of his followers ever since, and enabled him also to combine artistically certain marching or dancing or other rhythmical movements into a fixed series which could be executed by pupils to the accompaniment of some familiar song, or other musical composition, as in the case of the Miller-Reigen and the whole group of Lieder- and Tanz-Reigen.⁠[73]