A guide to the history of physical education

Immediately after Ling’s death, and in accordance with his wishes, Branting was appointed Director in his stead, and retained the position for twenty-three years (1839-1862). Born July 16, 1799, he had grown up a weak and sickly boy, and in the very first year of the Institute had been sent to Ling for treatment by means of medical gymnastics. Improvement was rapid, and the master was so impressed with the evident talent of his young patient that he offered to train him as a teacher of the art. Thenceforth the relation between the two resembled that of father and son. For several years Branting was a student at the Karolinska Mediko-Kirurgiska Institut (the largest medical college in Sweden) and attended clinics in the Serafimer-Lazarett (hospital), receiving instruction in chemistry under Berzelius, and showing such a fondness for anatomy and physiology that A. A. Retzius bore witness to his skill in the former subject. He learned to speak German, French, and English fluently, and travelled repeatedly in Germany and Austria. For more than twenty years he had been a member of the teaching staff at the Institute, under Ling, assisting the latter with his fencing at Karlberg and Marieberg, successfully introducing gymnastics among the girls at the large Hillska School, just outside the city, where he became teacher of gymnastics and music in 1831, and applying himself with marked enthusiasm to medical gymnastics. Ling gave him the first place among all his pupils, and turned over to him gradually a large share of the responsibility for both theoretical and practical instruction.

As director, Branting devoted himself chiefly to the development of medical gymnastics in accordance with the theories of his predecessor, and brought that branch to a high degree of perfection. He insisted that the beneficial effects are due not alone to changes produced in the muscular system, but mainly to the influence exerted upon the nerves and bloodvessels—a novel view at that time. He also elaborated a rich store of gymnastic material, and worked out a terminology which with a few changes is still generally employed in Sweden. It was at this period, too, that the work of the Institute began to awaken interest in other countries. As we have seen (pp. 122 and 123), two Prussian army officers, Lieutenants Rothstein and Techow, were sent to Stockholm to take the regular course of instruction in 1845-1846, and Rothstein afterwards wrote extensively on the Ling gymnastics and in 1851 became the first director of the Berlin “Central-Institute,” founded on the pattern of the Swedish school but without its department of medical gymnastics. Many other foreigners came for visits of varying duration, and physicians, especially, were attracted by the new system, among them Drs. Eulenburg and Neumann of Prussia, Melichor of Vienna, and Mathias Roth of London. Branting was made a knight of the orders of the North Star and the Red Eagle (Prussian) in 1847 and of St. Olaf and Dannebrog (Danish) in 1855, and in 1873 Commander of the Order of Vasa. After retiring from the position of Director in 1862 he was still actively engaged in the practice of his profession until his death, March 27, 1881.⁠[120] During his term of office the staff of instruction was enlarged, provision having been made for one additional teacher in 1841, and for two more, a man and a woman, in 1848. Some of these teachers deserve particular mention. Carl August Georgii (1808-1881), trained at the Karlberg Military Academy and made lieutenant in the army in 1836, had entered upon his service at the Institute ten years before Ling’s death, was chosen by the latter to edit and publish, with Dr. Liedbeck, his “General Principles of Gymnastics,” and in 1859 married the oldest daughter of Liedbeck and Jetta Ling. He became head teacher in 1839, giving instruction in anatomy and in the three branches of practical gymnastics. In 1846 he went to Paris to introduce the Swedish system, and the next year published in French a treatise on the Ling method of kinesitherapy and physical education. Two years later, in 1849, he withdrew from his Stockholm position and removed to London, where for twenty-eight years he presided over a private institution, giving lessons in fencing and conducting school gymnastics in addition to his medical work. His published writings in England include “Kinesipathy” (1850), a biographical sketch of Ling (1854), a lecture on “Rational Gymnastics” (1873), and “Kinetic Jottings” (1881). The last four years of his life were spent in Stockholm.⁠[121] The first woman to be regularly appointed as teacher at the Institute was Gustafra Lindskog (1790-1851), in 1848, and at her death she was succeeded by Ling’s daughter Hildur (1825-1884). Besides assisting in medical gymnastics they both devoted a portion of their time to the physical training of school girls. Two other teachers, Hjalmar Ling and T. J. Hartelius, who began their activity during this period, will be referred to again at some length farther on.

Branting’s successor was Col. Gustav Nyblæus (1816-1902), who filled the position of director for twenty-five years, from 1862 until 1887. He was trained as an officer in the army, and had been added to the staff of instruction at the Institute during the last year of Ling’s life. The school, which had hitherto been under the control of the Stockholm educational authorities, was now given its own board of directors, appointed by the King; the length of the course was increased from one year to two years of six months each (October 1 to April 1), and a regular course for women was opened; and the royal statutes of January 8, 1864, reorganized it into three sections, the pedagogical or educational, the military, and the medical, each with a head teacher and a second teacher. Provision was also made for extra teachers, both men and women, and a sum of over 167,000 rix-dollars was granted in 1863 for remodelling and adding to the buildings. Nyblæus himself became the head teacher in the section of military gymnastics, and the corresponding positions in the other sections were given to Ling’s son Hjalmar, in school gymnastics, and to Hartelius in medical gymnastics. Nyblæus visited at various times other European countries to study the systems of physical training employed in their schools⁠[122] and armies, and published several manuals of fencing for use at the Institute and in the Swedish army, and others of gymnastics and military exercises to meet the needs of teachers in elementary schools.⁠[123]

Truls Johan Hartelius (1818-1896) had taken the course at the Institute in the year 1851-1852, and began to give instruction there immediately after his graduation. He afterwards completed a course in medicine, became a regularly qualified physician, and held the position of head teacher in medical gymnastics from 1864 until 1887. Finding no text-books suitable for his classes, he prepared small manuals of anatomy, physiology and histology, and hygiene, and wrote a larger work on medical gymnastics which was translated into German, French, and English. When the corps of teachers decided to start a semi-annual periodical devoted to gymnastics in all its phases and therefore began the publication of the Tidskrift i Gymnastik⁠[124] in 1874, Hartelius undertook the editorship, and for fifteen years served in this capacity, contributing many articles on his own and related subjects and important biographical sketches of fellow workers along similar lines.⁠[125]

To Hjalmar Fredrik Ling (1820-1886) Swedish educational gymnastics is largely indebted for its present form, and the school gymnasium for the nature and arrangement of the equipment now in common use. He also made it possible to introduce physical training generally in the elementary schools and in schools for girls. The only surviving son of Per Henrik Ling, he was born in Stockholm, April 14, 1820, received an education equivalent to that given in the Swedish secondary schools, completed the course at the Institute (1842), and was installed as teacher there in 1843, devoting himself to educational and medical gymnastics under Branting’s direction, and studying anatomy with Dr. Liedbeck. In 1854 at Georgii’s suggestion he went to Paris to spend the better part of a year in study there, paying particular attention to anatomy, both human and comparative, but attending also Claude Bernard’s lectures on experimental physiology and the clinics at the Hôtel Dieu, and meanwhile acquiring a thorough knowledge of the French language and literature. During this same period he also paid two long visits to Berlin, to assist in introducing the Swedish method of medical gymnastics at the institutions of Drs. Eulenburg and Neumann, and took advantage of the opportunity to familiarize himself with the German language. From Paris he returned to Stockholm, became head teacher under Branting in 1858, and upon the reorganization of the course in 1864 was placed at the head of the section of school gymnastics. This position he continued to fill for eighteen years, until his retirement on a pension in September of 1882. For some years he was also in charge of the physical training in one of the city’s higher schools for boys (the Nya Elementarskola).

Following closely the ideas of his father, and with the sole thought of completing the latter’s work, he devised new forms of apparatus adapted to the needs of the school and so arranged them that large numbers could exercise at the same time, in this way greatly increasing the number of useful exercises and bringing them all within the reach of every pupil. Then collecting a mass of gymnastic material he selected the most suitable exercises and arranged them in groups according to the effects produced upon the individual, providing further an orderly progression in each group, and combining these into a complete lesson-scheme—the original “day’s order.” It was now possible to assign to different ages and degrees of ability, and to the two sexes, the appropriate material from the graded series of exercises, so that the benefits of gymnastics could be extended to girls and younger boys.

Hjalmar Ling published two pamphlets⁠[126] intended primarily as guides for his students at the Central Institute, and in 1866 a work on kinesiology (Rörelselära) or the science of bodily movements. He also assisted Hartelius with the Tidskrift i Gymnastik and for ten years (1874-1883) was one of its associate editors and a frequent contributor. Although not a clear writer, he was a deep thinker and an industrious compiler, familiar with the whole range of gymnastic literature,—German, French, and English—as a glance at the pamphlets just mentioned will show. He left behind a carefully arranged collection of nearly two thousand pen-drawings of positions and movements used in gymnastics, made by himself. These are preserved in the library of the school, and about a quarter of the entire number appear in a book⁠[127] since published with the help of a gift from Mrs. Mary Hemenway, the founder of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. The younger Ling died March 9, 1886, and was buried near his father at Annelund.⁠[128] He sought first of all to analyze the conditions of school life and the needs of the growing child, and then to devise forms of exercise, to select, invent, and arrange apparatus, and to elaborate a lesson plan which should meet these conditions and needs efficiently and with the greatest economy of time and effort. Opinions may differ as to the merits of particular details in the system he helped to perfect, but his method of approach to the problem deserves ungrudging commendation.

The head teachership in school gymnastics left vacant in 1882 was filled by the promotion of Captain Lars Mauritz Törngren (1839-1912), at that time second teacher in the same section and an officer in the navy; and he was further advanced to the position of director upon the retirement of Nyblæus in 1887. A third year (medical gymnastics only) was now added to the course, the school year was lengthened, and other minor changes were made. In 1894 a grant of 80,000 kronor made possible improved facilities for instruction and practice. Among Professor Törngren’s earlier writings had been a book on school games (Fria Lekar, Stockholm, 1879; 2d ed., 1880), the fruit of a visit to England in 1877, and an official manual of gymnastics for the Swedish navy (1878; 2d ed., 1879). Tidskrift i Gymnastik for 1890 (3: 145-195) contains further observations on physical education in English public schools, based on a second visit in 1889. In the spring of 1893 he came to the United States, and was present at the department Congress of Physical Education and the eighth annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education held in Chicago in July of that year. He was on the editorial staff of the Tidskrift i Gymnastik from its beginning in 1874, assuming more direct responsibility after Hartelius withdrew in 1888, and revised and reissued the pamphlets (Tabeller and Tillägg) prepared by Hjalmar Ling. His last and most important book was a manual of gymnastics⁠[129] for use in institutions which train teachers for the elementary schools. Major Carl Silow (1846-), second teacher in the section of school gymnastics 1883-1906, was very active and successful in the work of his department and made further improvements in the construction and arrangement of apparatus. The official handbook of gymnastics for the Swedish army and navy published in 1902⁠[130] is largely his work. For careful arrangement of material, detailed treatment of the different exercises, and clearness and beauty of the illustrations it is probably the most satisfactory manual of gymnastics yet issued anywhere.

Törngren was succeeded as director by Col. Viktor Gustav Balck (1844-) in 1907, and two years later retired from his position as head teacher in the section of school gymnastics. Balck, who in turn gave place to Major Nils Fredrik Sellén in 1909, had been head teacher of military gymnastics since 1887, following Nyblæus. He has been an ardent advocate of outdoor and other sports for young and old, organizing societies for their promotion, editing a series of a dozen volumes devoted to the various forms,⁠[131] and founding in 1881 the Tidning för Idrott (Sporting Times). He has also done much to promote the formation and spread of popular gymnastic societies, and to make Swedish gymnastics known in other countries. With this object in view he accompanied squads of fellow countrymen to Turnfeste at Brussels in 1877 and 1880, and in Paris in 1889 and 1900. Exhibitions were also given in London, Copenhagen, and Berlin, in connection with these trips. Together with Major Silow and other teachers he was a member of the committee which prepared the new handbook of gymnastics for the Swedish army and navy.

THE CENTRAL INSTITUTE IN 1900

The influence of the system of school gymnastics perfected by Hjalmar Ling and his associates and successors in the Central Institute at Stockholm began to be felt abroad, in Europe and America, in the years just preceding and following the appointment of Törngren as director. For this reason, as well as its age and intrinsic merits, a description of the institution as it was in the fall of 1900, based on first-hand studies⁠[132] deserves a place here.

Leaving behind him the cluster of rocky islands which once held all there was of Stockholm, and passing north on the mainland through one of the linden-bordered promenades of the “King’s Garden,” the visitor soon reaches Hamn-Gatan, its farther limit. If he turn to the left along this busy thoroughfare his eye will be caught by a steep hill just ahead, and at its summit a slight bend of the street to the right reveals on the south side a low and very plain two-story building constructed, like most of its neighbors, of large bricks coated with plaster over the entire free surface, and painted a weather-worn buff. From the crest of this hill the ground is seen to fall away rapidly on the other side, so that the building gains an additional story at its corner on Beridarebans-Gatan. The north front stretches for about two hundred feet along Hamn-Gatan. Beridarebans-Gatan crosses this street obliquely, the two forming an acute angle in which the property of the Institute lies. This explains its unsymmetrical arrangement; for half way down the Beridarebans-Gatan side, which measures about 240 feet, a building forty feet wide has been carried in at right angles to that street. Near the center of the Hamn-Gatan front is a large archway, and over this in raised gilt letters are the words “Kongl. Gymnastika Central-Institutet.” It leads into a triangular paved court (A) surrounded by plain structures of plastered brick, and a second archway, bisecting the opposite side of this court, communicates with a gravelled yard (B) at the rear. The director and some of the other teachers make their homes in the three-story sections C and D, which also contain servants’ quarters and on the ground floor a few dressing-rooms. The lower story of E is devoted to medical gymnastics for free patients, and overhead are the library (remarkably rich in the older literature of physical training) and a reading room, two lecture rooms, and others for student use and for the storage of anatomical collections and the like. A hallway starting from the east angle of the court opens into the men’s dressing room (F), with shower baths adjoining. G and H, two stories in height, contain on the ground floor large halls equipped for school gymnastics and fencing, and above these two other halls intended for patients who pay for treatment by medical gymnastics, and employed also for school gymnastics and as classrooms. There is a small one-story building (I) for practical exercises in anatomy, and opposite this in the yard is a low shed (J) about 80 by 30 feet, with corrugated iron roof and smooth concrete floor, supplied with a variety of gymnastic apparatus. It is open except on the street side. In the narrow rooms marked KK the schoolboys who receive their physical training at the Institute store their slippers and hang up coats and caps.

The general control is vested in a Board appointed by the King and composed of a president and three other members, of whom one must belong to the army or navy, one must be a teacher (skolman), and one a physician. The corps of instruction includes a head teacher and a second teacher in each of the three departments, the hygienic or educational, the military, and the medical; two women teachers, one of them in hygienic and the other in medical gymnastics; and extra teachers, both men and women, as these are required—a total of fifteen persons in 1900-1901. The royal statutes provide that all who give instruction at the school must be graduates from its courses. From among the head teachers the King selects one to act as director of the Institute, in immediate charge of the buildings and their contents and of the work that goes on in the halls and classrooms. This appointment is for five years, and is renewable.

The school year, divided into a fall and a spring semester, begins on the 15th of September and closes on the 25th of May, with an intermission of two weeks at Christmas time. For male pupils three courses are offered. The “Instructor’s Course,” extending through a single school year, gives the one who completes it the right to teach gymnastics in the elementary schools (folkskolor) or in one of the lower (five-year) secondary schools (lägre allmänna läroverk). In the “Gymnastic Teacher’s Course” a second year is added, and the graduate is eligible to a position as teacher of gymnastics in any public educational institution, civil or military, in the country. The course in medical gymnastics, leading to the title “Gymnastic Director,” requires still another year of study and practice, although for students of medicine the prescribed work may be shortened. No person, unless he is himself a physician, is allowed to give treatment by means of medical gymnastics in Sweden except in cases where a duly authorized physician has prescribed it in writing. Young women can complete both the gymnastic teacher’s course and that in medical gymnastics in two years, on account of the smaller range of practical exercises to be covered.

The men in attendance are for the most part young army and navy officers who have received orders to take the course. The balance consists of non-commissioned officers in the army and of young men in civil life. All must have passed such an examination as would entitle them to admission into one of the national universities; they must also possess a sound constitution and some aptitude for gymnastic exercises, and for all but physicians the age limit is thirty years. Young women must present certificates which would allow them to enter the national Higher Normal School for Women. There are no charges for tuition in any of the courses, and foreigners are admitted to them within certain limits. The total number of men present at any one time is commonly about sixty, and the women, formerly not half so numerous, are now rapidly approaching the same figure. During the autumn of 1900 there were in the student body two men from Greece and one each from Norway, Denmark, Finland, and the United States, while Russia, Holland, and England were represented among the women.

Work begins on Monday morning and continues through Saturday afternoon, as in other Swedish schools, for Sunday is the only holiday. The theoretical courses come at nine and at one o’clock, and the practical courses at seven, eleven, and two. At ten o’clock three hundred boys from the New Elementary School (it is a higher school, in spite of the name) visit the Institute to receive their gymnastic lesson in three of the large halls, affording material for practice in teaching, and further opportunity is given at three, when two hundred more arrive from the Jakobs Secondary School. The hours from eight to nine and twelve to one are free, and there are no exercises after four o’clock. The theoretical courses of the first-year men include: (1) Lectures and recitations on the anatomy of the bones, ligaments, and muscles (three times a week through the year); (2) the physiology of the circulation and of the organs of nutrition, including respiration (twice a week during the second semester); (3) the theory of school gymnastics, covering the discussion of the various positions and movements, the commands employed and the common faults observed, the arrangement of exercises in a lesson, and progression in each lesson and from day to day (twice a week through the year); (4) military gymnastics (twice a week during the first semester), and (5) the theory of fencing (twice a week through the year). There is one hour of practical instruction each day in school gymnastics, another in fencing with foils, and a third in fencing with saber and bayonet, together with daily practice in teaching under the supervision of the director and members of his staff. The five hundred boys who come to the Institute meet in the various halls according to school grade, and the hundred or so in each room are subdivided into a half-dozen squads, which exercise separately under the direction of first-year students during part of the lesson and are watched and corrected by them when the whole roomful is receiving commands from a single leader.

The theoretical courses of the second year include (1) the study of anatomy three hours a week in the lecture room, and in addition two exercises a week in the dissecting room during a large part of the year; (2) two lectures a week on the physiology of the blood, the circulation, respiration, digestion, and excretion; (3) lectures on kinesiology or the theory of bodily movements (twice a week); (4) the theory of school gymnastics (twice a week); and (5) instruction and practice in the forms of treatment employed in medical gymnastics, followed by special study of the class of cases likely to be met with in the schools. The practical work, besides that just mentioned, again covers the branches of school gymnastics, fencing with foils, fencing with saber and bayonet, and actual teaching, the students in the two years meeting in each case at the same hour and in the same rooms. In the hour devoted to school or hygienic gymnastics, however, the division of the class into two sections for exercises in hanging and climbing and in jumping and vaulting allows some difference to be made in the work of the two years; and in the fencing, where the men are grouped in squads, the work of each corresponds with the stage of progress reached by its members, and the second-year students also meet twice a week by themselves, in the presence of their instructors, for practise in free fencing. Each man is now required to take his turn at directing one of the classes of a hundred or more schoolboys for a week at a time, making out his own “day’s order” for the opening exercises, in which the entire class work as a unit, then supervising the exercises of the different squads, and handling the whole number again during the marching and running. One of the instructors at the Institute is always present, but the student assumes all the responsibility of leadership for the time being. The second-year man is also called upon to give individual instruction in foil fencing twice a week to men of the lower class, as assistant to the regular instructor, and a somewhat similar plan is followed in the courses in saber and bayonet fencing. Though swimming is not included in the curriculum, no one can receive a certificate as graduate from the “Gymnastic Teacher’s Course” without furnishing evidence that he possesses a satisfactory degree of skill in that art.

Third-year pupils attend lectures six times a week in anatomy, the physiology of the muscles and the nervous system, and pathology, are further instructed in the theory and practice of medical gymnastics, and assist in giving treatment to patients who visit the Institute. Women in both courses receive separate instruction throughout, for there is no such thing as coeducation at the school. Their theoretical work includes anatomy, physiology, the theory of bodily movements and of pedagogical gymnastics, medical gymnastics, and pathology; and there is practise in pedagogical and medical gymnastics, and opportunity to teach gymnastics daily, under supervision, at one or the other of two private schools.

PROPOSED REORGANIZATION OF THE CENTRAL INSTITUTE (1912).

On April 8, 1910, the King of Sweden appointed a special committee to consider plans for the reorganization of the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics, and the provision of a new site and buildings. Their report,⁠[133] dated March 7, 1912, recommends numerous radical and far-reaching changes in the venerable institution, and would substitute civilian for military teachers of gymnastics in the great majority of Swedish secondary schools. As was to be expected, it has called out much discussion on either side. Whatever the outcome may be, the document remains a memorable study of every public aspect of physical education, and the committee has rendered a service of the very highest value, not only to the Swedes, but to all who are confronted by the problem of training teachers for the physical education of the people.⁠[134]