Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, the father of popular gymnastics (Volks- or Vereinsturnen) in Germany, was born August 11, 1778, at Lanz, a Prussian hamlet lying midway between Hamburg and Berlin and only a few miles distant from the right bank of the Elbe. His father, the village pastor, was a large and vigorous man, faithful to all the varied duties of his office, and at the same time a thrifty manager of the parochial estate, fond of his garden, and with hop-fields and sheep of his own. The mother was a strong, brave woman of Puritan type, devoutly religious, severely plain in her manner of living, industrious and economical, and not unlike the peasant women of the parish in outward appearance. Their only other child was a daughter, born two years before.

The first thirteen years of the boy’s life were spent at home, mostly outdoors and in the company of older persons. At the age of four he began to read with his mother in Luther’s translation of the Bible, a book with which he afterwards showed great familiarity. This was followed by Pufendorf’s record of the Great Elector’s deeds and by the historical writings of Frederick the Great. The latter monarch died when Jahn was eight years old, and was made a very real hero to him by the tales of veterans of the Seven Years’ War living in the neighborhood and of troopers attracted by the rich pasturage there. In addition to Latin his father taught him history, geography, and the German language, which soon became his favorite studies and continued to interest him deeply throughout his school and university days.

Rich cultivated lands and broad meadows alternate with pine woods and patches of arid, sandy soil on the surface of the alluvial plain which reaches out in all directions from Lanz. Not allowed to mingle much with the peasant children, Jahn roamed these neighboring fields and forests, learned from grown-up acquaintances to ride and swim and shoot, helped his father in the garden, went with him across the Elbe to market the hops at Dannenberg, in the electorate of Hannover, and accompanied other hop-growers as far as Lübeck, Wismar, and Rostock, on the Baltic. His mother came from Neustadt, in the adjoining duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and frequent trips with smugglers across the borders of this state, only ten miles away to the north, made him thoroughly at home on every road and foot path leading thither. It was this frontier life and his early visits to other states that made it easy for Jahn in later years to disregard sectional barriers and to view as citizens of a common country all who spoke the German language. The relation of lord and vassal was unknown in Lanz and most of the peasants owned the farms they tilled. Jahn breathed in the prevailing spirit of self-reliance and independence, and grew up sturdy and fearless, fond of his native language and customs, and proud of the history of Prussia, and of Brandenburg, his own province, in particular.

On October 8, 1791, he entered the higher classical school (Gymnasium) at Salzwedel, an old Prussian town about twenty-five miles to the southwest of Lanz. Notwithstanding the lack of system and completeness in his home training the boy’s marked natural ability, his gift of quick perception, and his retentive memory must have led to rapid progress; for three years later (September 27, 1794), at the age of sixteen, he was received into the eighth class (Unter-prima) at the Gymnasium zum grauen Kloster in Berlin. On the 17th of the following April, after spending only six months at this second school, he left for home suddenly and without taking leave, so that for a time the authorities supposed some accident had befallen him. In contrast with the outdoor life and the comparative freedom from restraint of his earlier years, he had found the confinement and orderly discipline of the classroom doubly irksome; and his country plainness, not to say roughness, of speech and manners and want of familiarity with city ways, together with his independent spirit and the absence of intimate companionship with boys of his own age while he was living at home, had led to repeated misunderstandings with teachers and fellow-pupils alike.

His university career was even more irregular and stormy, but now his native capacity for leadership and a certain rugged eloquence in public speaking began to reveal themselves. For five years, dating from April 27, 1796, he was a student in the University of Halle. In obedience to his father’s wish he undertook the study of theology; but it was not in his nature, nor had his imperfect preparation fitted him, to take one of the usual professional courses. Prussian and German history and the German language and literature, subjects generally neglected at that day but dear to his own heart from childhood, absorbed more and more of his time and thought. Thus, after three years we find him selling, for ten thalers, the manuscript of a small treatise on “The Promotion of Patriotism in Prussia,”⁠[42] a glorification of that state and its rulers, and a plea for more attention to the study of Prussian history in the schools and universities as a means of developing love of country. The purchaser published the work a year later, with his own name on the title page. Meanwhile Jahn’s habits of study continued to be desultory. Although he attended lectures, and in the philological seminar of F. A. Wolf won that scholar’s commendation for his “language instinct,” few of the courses begun were completed in orderly fashion, and his work was interrupted by frequent excursions on foot to various parts of Germany.

Another disturbing factor was the war which he soon declared against the student clubs and associations of fellow-countrymen known as Landsmannschaften, the predecessors of the present Corps. The sectional character of these “circles” is evident from their names—Westphalians, Pomeranians, Silesians, Magdeburgers, Anhalters, etc.; and it seems to have been their spirit of narrow provincialism, coupled with the dissolute life and constant duelling of their members, which roused him to an almost fanatical opposition and was the occasion of incessant brawls. His increasing difficulties with the Landsmannschaften and the effort to unite against them all students outside their ranks brought him at length into conflict with the academic authorities, and he left Halle to continue the same passionate struggle for a time at Jena, where his eloquence gained him a considerable following among the students.

Apparently it was a desire to study the Northern languages that carried him next into what was then Swedish Pomerania, where he was received into the University of Greifswald May 31, 1802, enrolling himself under a false name. Here, too, in spite of poverty, he soon became a recognized leader. It was rumored that he belonged to the proscribed secret order of Unitists. However this may have been, before many months had passed certain wild student pranks and the violent outcome of a factional feud resulted in his appearance before the academic authorities, by whom he and a fellow student were given, on February 7, 1803, the consilium abeundi.

After the turmoil of his school and university life there now succeeded a period of quiet teaching and literary labors, during which the man gathered himself together, formed those settled convictions which were the mainspring of his future career, and gave evidence of his underlying strength and soundness of character. For two years he was a private tutor, in Neubrandenburg until the end of September, 1804, and then at the Torgelow glass-works, twenty-five miles westward. The first of these years witnessed a foreshadowing of the great work begun seven years later in Berlin. Every evening he gave his pupils, the sons of Baron Lefort, instruction in swimming, in a brook near the town, followed by practice in running, climbing, jumping, and wrestling on a neighboring height, and by a few lively games. Any other boys who happened to be present, although strangers to him and with no claim upon his services, were made welcome, and in this way the number was increased to twenty or thirty. New and equally vigorous outdoor exercises were substituted in the late fall and winter months.

On October 1, 1805, Jahn took public leave of his Mecklenburg friends through the columns of the Strelitz’scher Anzeiger. His next move, made in the interest of literary plans and to favor his own advancement, was to Göttingen. Some months were spent in linguistic studies at the University, and in the summer of 1806 he removed to Jena, where he completed a volume of “Contributions to High German Synonymy,” embodying material collected in all parts of Germany during the excursions of his university days. The book is the work of an ardent friend of the German language, and not of a scientific philologist; and it reveals the keen observer of the country and its inhabitants, as well as the student of popular dialects.

Jahn had hoped to get a footing in the university at Göttingen, it seems; but in the fall of 1806, while he was sojourning in the Harz Mountains, his plans were suddenly changed and his thoughts turned from the classroom to the camp. Napoleon’s incursions and his insolent treatment, which were threatening the very existence of Prussia, had at last compelled Frederick-William III to take up arms against the French. Learning that war was inevitable, Jahn immediately gave up his visit and hastened toward the army which was gathering in Thuringia, intending to volunteer his services. Delayed by swollen streams, he reached Jena on the day of the battle (October 16, 1806), saw the last struggle and the crushing defeat, and joined the fleeing soldiery as a “volunteer fugitive.” Frederick-William’s ill-prepared and poorly officered troops had proved an easy prey for the French. One by one the great fortresses were surrendered and garrisoned by the enemy’s forces, the royal family was forced to flee from Berlin, and by the Treaty of Tilsit (July, 1807) Prussia lost half her territory and became virtually a mere province of France, overrun by the soldiers of the conqueror and entirely at his mercy.

Jahn’s flight and later wanderings led him by wide detours to Halle and Magdeburg, down the Elbe, across to the Baltic and westward along the coast to Lübeck (November 5), thence into Silesia, apparently, and back again to Jena, where he remained until the Treaty of Tilsit. Afterwards, until the fall of 1809, he spent a portion of his time at home, but lived for the most part with a friend at Dammeretz, on the Elbe some distance below Lanz. Before the outbreak of the war he had been engaged on two works, a “Handbook for Germans,” and “German Nationality” (Deutsches Volksthum); but the manuscript of both seems to have been lost in the days following the battle of Jena. The former was not rewritten, but the latter, his chief literary work, was again ready in 1808 (the introduction is dated October 14, at Lanz) and appeared at Lübeck in the spring of 1810. Its central thought is the unity of Germany, and in its pages his controlling passion for the German language, customs, and history, his intense love for the fatherland, and his desire to see it bound together into one strong nation, able to throw off the foreign yoke, found full and forcible expression.

Late in December of 1809 Jahn arrived in Berlin, where, as he says, love for the fatherland and his own inclination led him again to teaching. Disappointed in his original idea of finding a position in the new Berlin University, and failing to receive a promised head mastership at Königsberg when the results of his faulty school and university training became apparent, he at first received some private pupils, and the next Easter entered a training school for teachers (the Königliche Seminar für gelehrte Schulen). He also began to give instruction in history, German, and mathematics at the Gymnasium zum grauen Kloster, the school from which he had run away fifteen years before. This position he retained for a year and a half, until Christmas, 1811, and in the meantime he had been given some classes in Dr. Plamann’s flourishing Pestalozzian School for Boys.

It was the custom at the Graue Kloster for teachers to spend some of the Wednesday and Saturday half-holiday afternoons outdoors with pupils of the lower classes. In the spring of 1810 Jahn began to make this his practice, meeting the boys from time to time outside the Halle and Kottbus gates for games and simple exercises like running, jumping, and wrestling, or going farther south with them to the Hasenheide, a hilly and wooded stretch of unused land on the southern slope of the Spree valley, and to the adjoining Rollberge and the Tempelhofer Berg. Older scholars were welcomed whenever curiosity and inclination tempted them to join the band, and the numbers rapidly increased from week to week. They played at “Black Man,” or at “Robber and Traveler” (afterwards known as “Knight and Townsman”), using a fowler’s hut for the robbers’ den and the foot of an oak as the city or castle from which the travelers set forth. The first apparatus, furnished by Jahn, was a pair of light poles tipped with iron points so that they could be thrust into the sand, and a rope with a sandbag at either end, which was placed across the top as a barrier to be jumped over. Long, straight sticks were used like spears for hurling at any mark that might be chosen. The limb of an oak, their first horizontal bar, sufficed for hanging exercises and for attempts to draw themselves up by the arms. Preparatory jumping exercises, borrowed from GutsMuths, were occasionally practised. One afternoon Jahn went on foot with ten or twelve boys as far as the Britzer Heide, to the southeast, where they had a game together and then walked back. The report of this first Turnfahrt (gymnastic excursion) roused the desire for others of a similar sort.

Jahn knew how to vary the exercises and make each one interesting, and the moments of rest were filled with jokes and banter or with stories drawn from history and from his own experiences. Winning thus the respect and love of all his young companions, he was able to overcome the spirit of dissension which at the start was ready to break out on slight provocation, and made harmony and discipline prevail. During the following winter a part of those who had been regular in attendance still held together, and were allowed a share in the indoor exercises of the pupils at Plamann’s school—fencing with light broadswords and shooting at a target with crossbows. This group formed a nucleus for the next year’s work.

The spring of 1811 saw Jahn again at the Hasenheide with pupils from the Graue Kloster and Plamann’s school. But now he had a more definite plan in mind. Immediately after school hours on Wednesdays and Saturdays work was begun in an opening in the woods, opposite a few public houses. They first fenced in a rectangular area and built in the background a small hut or arbor where clothing could be left, and then set up within the enclosure their simple apparatus. This comprised a horizontal mast or balance-beam, a rope hung from a yard which was fastened crosswise in the limbs of two trees, a group of horizontal bars made by tying three small fir trunks, at a height of seven feet, to three pines which stood at the points of a triangle, a roughly made inclined ladder, two climbing masts, one fifteen and the other twenty feet or more in height, and two sets of fixed standards for use in high jumping and pole-vaulting. They also made a jumping ditch, and laid out a figure-of-eight track, one circle of which served as a wrestling place. Games were to be played outside the enclosure.

Early in June this first Turnplatz⁠[43] was opened. Each boy was assessed fourteen groschen (thirty-three cents) to meet the expense of keeping grounds and apparatus in condition; but Jahn evidently advanced much of the original cost himself, and he granted free admission to any boys of good character who were unable to pay the light charge. Meanwhile the attendance had increased to eighty or a hundred, and later in the summer it rose to two hundred. A friend of Jahn’s came with many of his pupils from the Friedrich-Wilhelms- und Werder’schen Gymnasium, and two other teachers brought boys from the Schindler’schen Orphan Asylum. Seeing the need of a special suit for the exercises, Jahn appeared one day clad in long trousers and a short jacket of gray unbleached linen, a costume so cheap and durable that its use soon became general on the Turnplatz, and an enemy of the turners was in the habit of referring to them later as “the unbleached rascals.” All distinctions of rank and class disappeared with the adoption of this uniform costume. Lunches consisted of bread and salt, or of bread and butter and eggs, and pure spring water was the usual drink. Tobacco and brandy, together with all sweetstuffs, were forbidden.

Tuesday and Friday afternoons were added to the usual half-holidays during the months of July and August. Besides the games, wrestling, in which Jahn was himself uncommonly proficient, retained its popularity in spite of the new apparatus. There was no wooden horse as yet, but one day Friedrich Friesen, a fellow teacher with Jahn at Plamann’s school, showed them how to vault from the rear and the side to a seat on the thick end of the balance beam. The exercises were not yet orderly or organized, but every boy was an inventor and shared the result with others, learning from them in turn. It was hardly in Jahn’s nature to be systematic, and such a thing as a formal school of gymnastics was foreign to his purpose. The essential thing was the active, wholesome, common life in the open air, and especially the games, training the boys to work together in harmony, and he sought also to kindle in them a public spirit which might some day be of service to the nation.

With the approach of winter all movable apparatus at the Hasenheide was stored away, and now Jahn and his oldest pupils began to read eagerly whatever they could find on the subject of physical training, studying with special care the books of GutsMuths and Vieth.

A year’s experience had shown that the first Turnplatz was too small, too near the public houses, too exposed to “weather, wind, and wit.” With the first spring sun of 1812 work was therefore begun on a new site farther to the east and south, the free use of which was granted by the authorities. It lay on a tableland at the head of the slope, close to the Rollberge, and was protected from the wind on three sides by dense thickets of pine, fir, and oak. Paths were made leading to this spot, the surface was levelled off, more trees were set out, another hut was erected, in the center of the grounds this time and with a meeting and resting place near it (the Tie), and the apparatus was brought away from the old Turnplatz. The equipment received numerous additions. Three vaulting bucks or horses without pommels, three, four, and five feet high respectively, were constructed out of tree-trunks. Nearby stood the first crude models of our parallel bars—three pairs of thin beams about twelve feet long, those in each set placed parallel with each other and about two feet apart. They corresponded in height with the bucks, and the original aim in using them was merely to gain the strength of arm and hand necessary for lifting and supporting the body during vaulting exercises. New jumping ditches and running tracks, a larger balance beam, targets with movable iron-mounted heads, and more elaborate devices for hanging and climbing exercises were provided.

Jahn had already begun to note down and arrange the various exercises, but everything was still in process of development. Although the other apparatus was not neglected, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar soon became the favorite pieces, and the boys vied with each other in inventing new performances on them. Three turners who had received private instruction in vaulting during the winter preceding met for further practice at special hours with little groups of skilled companions, and for this purpose Friesen arranged to have a live horse brought to the Turnplatz on certain days. Less interest was taken in jumping, and games did not hold such a prominent place as formerly. Once a month Jahn used to stay all night at the grounds, going through the exercises by moonlight with his pupils. It was also the custom for several of them to keep watch there regularly, as a precaution against thieving. The Turnfahrten were renewed, and gave a great impetus to excursions of all sorts. More than a hundred turners are said to have gone off on foot during the summer vacation, some of them on very considerable journeys.

Before the season was over the attendance had reached five hundred, new arrivals streaming in from all classes of society. On Sundays adults were allowed to take part. In general, the popular attitude toward the movement was very favorable. Spectators of every rank and by the hundred gathered at the sides of the Turnplatz, and the evident physical benefit from the work, the harmony that existed and the strong national feeling cultivated there were at once appreciated. Jahn worked alone, for the most part, assisted, however, by the older and more experienced pupils, whom he was now able to employ as squad leaders (Vorturner). If something new was to be practised he selected a few of the most skilful and showed them the exercise himself, and they in turn spread it from group to group. In spite of the numbers, accidents were unknown during this and the preceding summers. Occasionally gentle measures were not sufficient to preserve discipline. It it said that Jahn knew how to use a rope-end, and that when two boys had quarreled he used to furnish each of them with a pliant root, with which they fought it out in the presence of their comrades, clad in their thin linen breeches, and striking with all their might lest they should appear cowardly.

In the winter of 1812-13 some of the best turners, with Friesen at their head, organized a society for the critical study of gymnastics and to work out an artistic arrangement of the material which had accumulated. A hall was also rented, a wooden vaulting horse was purchased with a hundred thalers which some of them had collected, and practice in vaulting and fencing was continued.

The momentous events of the next three years, which drew all Europe into the conflict with Napoleon and culminated in his final overthrow at Waterloo (June 18, 1815), put a temporary check upon the further development of Jahn’s work at the Hasenheide, at the same time that they emphasized its value. On March 17, 1813, King Frederick-William III of Prussia declared war upon France and appealed to his people to join in the great War of Liberation. Jahn was among the first to respond. He entered Lützow’s famous Free Corps, and his example was quickly followed by most of the turners who were old enough to bear arms. Although he made occasional visits to the Turnplatz in 1813 and 1814, and remained in Berlin during the campaign of 1815 to watch over the work there, he had entrusted it, before joining the Corps, to lottery director Johann J. W. Bornemann, who had shown great interest in the movement. He had also persuaded one of his earliest and most capable pupils, Ernst Eiselen, the state of whose health incapacitated him for military service, to undertake the direction of the exercises, and this position Eiselen seems to have retained throughout the three seasons. At the suggestion of Minister von Schuckmann and with the approval of Chancellor Hardenberg, Jahn’s annual allowance was increased from 500 to 800 thalers, Eiselen was provided with a salary of 400 thalers, and for the support of the Turnplatz a yearly grant of 150 thalers was made, together with free timber for building purposes.

Some important additions were made at the grounds meanwhile, and work went on as usual, though with diminished numbers. In August of 1814 General Blücher paid a visit to the spot, and after watching some of the exercises made a brief address. The Crown Prince, who also appeared there, was especially pleased with the wrestling. The wife of Prince William came with her children, and the sons of Prince Radziwill, the King’s brother-in-law, were on intimate terms with the turners. Jahn was married at Neubrandenburg on August 30, 1814, to Helene Kollhof, whom he had met while he was a private tutor in Mecklenburg, nearly ten years before. During the same summer Bornemann published a “Manual of the Gymnastics Revived by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn under the name of Turnkunst,”⁠[44] intended to prepare the way for Jahn’s own book which was not ready until two years later. A society of older turners, consisting originally of nine members, was organized in the fall of 1814, and met every Saturday with Massmann, one of their number, to practise songs, discuss regulations, revise the exercises by series, fix rules for the games, and choose leaders for the squads. The first anniversary of the Battle of Leipsic (October 18 and 19) was celebrated at the Turnplatz with huge signal fires, songs by all the turners, and a great exhibition. The number of spectators on this occasion was estimated at ten thousand, including many persons of distinction and delegates from six neighboring towns.

In the fall of 1815 and the following winter gymnastics was again made the subject of associated investigation, and now the results of so much study and experience were gradually brought together into book form. Eiselen undertook the technical portions, with the help of Massmann, Dürre, and others, while Jahn wrote the remainder, decided in doubtful cases, and revised the whole. March 31, 1816, he signed the preface, and on April 29 the finished volume was published under the title Die Deutsche Turnkunst (“German Gymnastics”).⁠[45]

No analysis of this book can convey any idea of the charm and vigor of its style, or of the lofty patriotism that pervades it. The preface (pages iii-xlviii) tells the story of the Hasenheide Turnplatz, the origin of the word Turnkunst, and how the present volume came to be written. The author believes that, though incomplete, it reveals the spirit of the workers, and will serve as a guide in similar undertakings elsewhere. Only preliminary and fundamental forms of exercises have been described; such others as fencing, swimming, dancing, and military exercises must be left for a larger work. The early history of gymnastics, especially in connection with popular festivals, deserves careful investigation, for contests of strength and skill are a necessary feature on these occasions. The German nomenclature of gymnastics is explained and defended. Certain Prussian authorities who have proved themselves promoters and patrons of Jahn’s efforts are mentioned; and finally a gymnastic annual is promised, the first number to appear the following year at Eastertide. Part I, The Gymnastic Exercises (pp. 3-166), is arranged in eighteen sections, devoted respectively to walking, running, jumping, vaulting the horse, balancing, the horizontal bar, the parallel bars, climbing, throwing, pulling, pushing, lifting, carrying, holding the body outstretched horizontally, wrestling, jumping with the hoop, and with the rope, and miscellaneous exercises. In each case the necessary apparatus is described. Part II, Gymnastic Games (pp. 169-183): Gymnastics and games are links in the same chain, and a gymnasium without a playground is inconceivable; games prepare for social life, and in them one comes to know his mates thoroughly; the characteristics of a good game are given, and six selected games are described—black man, prisoner’s base, knight and townsman, the hunt, storming, and German ball. Part III (pp. 187-206) tells how to lay out and fit up an outdoor gymnasium, and gives specifications for the complete equipment of one which will accommodate four hundred persons working in squads. Dimensions of each piece of apparatus, and of its parts, are stated in detail, so that the cost in any given locality can be figured out. Part IV (pp. 209-244) discusses the management of the grounds and exercises, with sections on the art of gymnastics, the gymnasium, the teacher, the exercises, the exercise period, costume, meeting place (the Tie), and spectators; and gives the general and special rules to be observed by the turners. Part V (pp. 247-288) contains a classified bibliography of gymnastics, with about 170 titles; and explains the plan of an outdoor gymnasium shown on the first of two large folding plates. A portion of the first plate and all of the second illustrate various forms of apparatus.

After the appearance of the book work was continued at the Hasenheide throughout the seasons of 1816-18 with little change, from early spring until the exercises of October 18, the anniversary of the Battle of Leipsic. Gymnastics must still hibernate during the winter, from lack of suitable accommodations indoors. On October 22, 1816, Jahn reported that the number of turners in Berlin had passed the thousand mark. The next year it increased to 1074, and life on the Turnplatz reached its culmination. Hans Ferdinand Massmann had returned to Berlin at Easter, after a year at Jena, and from July 15 until September 2 he took the place of Eiselen at the grounds, while the latter was absent at Kiel in the interest of his health. More trees were planted, seats were provided around the Tie, and other improvements and additions were made. The turners began the afternoon with whatever form of exercise each preferred for himself (Kürturnen); then followed a period of rest, after which all took part in the orderly exercises (Turnschule), grouped in squads and divisions according to age. Each squad had its leader (Vorturner), who also kept a record of the attendance and proficiency of its members. Massmann had prepared a set of instructions for the guidance of these leaders, and there were written lists of exercises in tabular form (Turntafeln) to show the steps of progression in each group.

Whole days were often given up to games, which were still popular, and almost every Saturday they were played all night long. Excursions, with older turners especially, and enlivened by Jahn’s talk and by many a song, were continued during this and the following summer. The nights were passed in haylofts or on the straw in some shed, and at sunrise they started on, first singing together a selection more or less devotional. For Jahn was an earnest Christian; his knapsack always contained a Bible, and he frequently read aloud from it to his companions, showing a preference for prophetic passages from the Old Testament. At the celebration of October 18 thousands were present. Jahn first gave a review of the year’s progress; following this all joined in a song, and then came competitive exercises, a torchlight procession to the Rollberge, more speechmaking and singing, and the lighting of huge bonfires. On the 31st of the same month the universities of Jena and Kiel each conferred on Jahn the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in recognition of his services to the fatherland in time of need, his stimulating influence on the young, his power as a public speaker, and his efforts in behalf of the German language.

The number of turners dropped to 815 in the season of 1818, but there seems to have been no weakening in Jahn’s hold upon the love of his followers. We hear again of the close friendships formed among them, the manly qualities encouraged, the earnest effort to be purely German in speech, custom, and dress, and the underlying seriousness of their joyous life together. After the day’s exercise they used to return to the city in groups, each with some favorite leader as its center. Singing and conversation alternated until the Kottbus gate was reached; there they halted until all had come up, joined in a final song, and then scattered to their homes.

The next spring (1819) the Turnplatz did not open at the usual time. The Prussian Ministry had in mind a union of gymnastics with the whole scheme of instruction in the schools. Summer and winter exercises alike were to be under its supervision. Additional grounds were to be opened, and one site had already been secured near Berlin. The plan was nearly ready, and Jahn was informed that for the present, until it should be perfected, the authorities desired that the Hasenheide Turnplatz should remain closed.

The years 1814-18 had witnessed a rapid and remarkable spread of the Jahn Turnen far beyond the narrow bounds of its first home, throughout the length and breadth of the Prussian provinces, and into other German states as well. Outdoor gymnasia had been opened, for example, at Königsberg, Elbing, Marienwerder, and at least four other cities in East and West Prussia; at a score of places in Silesia, beginning with Breslau and Liegnitz, and including Bunzlau, Frankenstein, Waldenburg, Strehlen, Hirschberg, Neisse, Leobschütz, Gleiwitz, Brieg, and Kreuzburg; at Friedland, Neubrandenburg, Neustrelitz, and Malchin in Mecklenburg; Potsdam, Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and Prenzlau in Brandenburg; the free cities of Hamburg and Lübeck; in central Germany at Leipsic, Halle, Jena, Erfurt, Gotha, Eisenach, Rudolstadt, Mühlhausen, Nordhausen, and Heiligenstadt; at Frankfort, Hanau, and Offenbach on the Main, and along the Rhine at Mainz, Bonn, Cologne, and Düsseldorf; at Darmstadt and Giessen in Hesse, Heidelberg in Baden, Stuttgart and Tübingen in Württemberg, and Erlangen and Hof in Bavaria.

In general the early history of these Turnplätze resembles that of the parent organization in Berlin. A majority of them were started in connection with higher schools for boys, but they often included in their membership teachers and university students, clerks and young mechanics,—all classes of society. Usually the prime mover was some teacher, impelled, like Jahn, by a motive which was patriotic rather than pedagogical; and afterwards local, provincial, or state authorities not infrequently added their support. Sometimes it was the public officials themselves who inaugurated the movement. The common incentive was the great tidal wave of love for the fatherland which swept over Germany at the time of the War of Liberation. Many a teacher who had fought in Lützow’s or some other volunteer corps and joined in the stirring songs of Karl Theodor Körner about the campfire or on the march went back to his classroom filled with a desire to see developed in his young charges a stronger patriotism, a simpler, more vigorous, and more manly type of life, less regard for distinctions of rank and wealth, a spirit of mutual helpfulness and a willingness to unite with others for the common welfare. Jahn’s Turnen had already shown its fitness for these ends.

In many cases assistance was received directly from Berlin. Thus in September of 1814 Jahn sent Eduard Dürre,⁠[46] one of his Vorturners, to Friedland in Mecklenburg, where two teachers were trying to introduce the exercises in the Gelehrtenschule; and the same year Massmann started a Turnplatz at Schwerinsburg. At the request of the Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province Jahn recommended in 1816 a teacher of gymnastics for Cologne, and a similar request from two Jena professors was met by persuading Massmann and Dürre to continue their studies in that university for a time. When the Deutsche Turnkunst appeared in 1816 it became at once the authority on all Turnplätze and the guide in opening new ones. A glance at the contents will show how admirably and completely it meets the requirements of such a manual. Minister von Schuckmann ordered fifty copies sent to the West Prussian authorities in Marienwerder, at their request, and two hundred more for distribution among other provincial officials. In Westphalia, for example, twenty-four higher classical schools for boys were thus supplied. Numerous visitors, too, came to Berlin for a longer or shorter time to be trained as teachers of gymnastics. Some did this at their own motion and expense, and others received state support. In 1816 there were, among others, three normal school students from Weissenfels, and teachers from Neumark, Neustadt a. d. Dosse, Wusterhausen, and Neurippen. Jahn made them all welcome, charged no fees, gave his time and personal interest freely in regular hours and out, and saw that each one obtained the best possible preparation.

His own brief trips and longer excursions should also be mentioned in this connection. A short visit which he paid to Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1815 led a band of school boys there to fit up a private Turnplatz. In September of the next year he was very cordially received by a congress of seventy school inspectors, clergymen, and teachers at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and delivered an address on gymnastics which made a deep impression. A month’s excursion with eighteen older turners in July and August of 1817 took him through Mecklenburg and Pomerania to the Island of Rügen, in the Baltic. The party was hospitably greeted and entertained by the turners in Neustrelitz, Neubrandenburg, and Friedland, joining with them in exercises on the Turnplatz, or matching strength at tug-of-war and wrestling. They met other turners from Prenzlau, and at Puttbus, before a large audience, gave a sort of gymnastic exhibition with an accompaniment of national songs. Again the next summer he set out with thirteen school boys, intending to be absent four weeks. They journeyed southeast through Hirschberg and Waldenburg to Breslau, spent several days with turners in the Silesian capital, and on the way back visited Liegnitz, Züllichau, and Frankfort-on-the-Oder.⁠[47]

Still another agency in the spread of Jahn Turnen is found in the Burschenschaften, or general student unions, organized in the German universities as one result of the War of Liberation. Students who had served in Lützow’s Free Corps, the most national of the volunteer regiments, took the lead in forming the first of these at Jena, where it was publicly announced on the 12th of June, 1815. The new association was intended to correct the abuses of the Landsmannschaften or sectional clubs, to promote the physical and moral vigor of its members, and to awaken love for the common German fatherland and a desire to see it free and united. Gymnastics was at once introduced and practised after the Berlin fashion. Jahn watched the inception and spread of the movement with the keenest interest, if he did not himself have a hand in sketching the plan of organization; and he sent to Jena two of his most trusted pupils, Dürre and Massmann, whose activity there was not confined to the Turnplatz. Other Burschenschaften were soon formed in the universities at Halle, Leipsic, Giessen, Heidelberg, Bonn, Erlangen, and elsewhere, and with them wandering students from Berlin, Breslau, and Jena carried the art of the Hasenheide Turnvater. Thus Karl Völker, one of the directors of the Jena Burschenschaft, after completing his studies there went to Tübingen in 1818 to accept an invitation from students in that university to help them organize a Burschenschaft and start a Turnplatz. The city offered a site, upon condition that the boys in its Bürgerschule and Gymnasium should be allowed a share in the exercises.⁠[48]

The key to the history of the Hasenheide Turnplatz and the scores of others patterned after it in the years 1814-18 we have found in the spirit of the German War of Liberation. To this also are to be traced the repressive measures which suddenly checked the growth of the seemingly lusty organization before the completion of its first decade, and for more than twenty years banished it as a factor in the popular life. When the common people rose in arms against Napoleon it was with the hope that war would result, not only in freedom from the foreign yoke, but in closer union between the semi-independent German states, and the substitution of constitutional liberty for the absolutism of personal rule. They secured promises of ample concession to these cravings, but found, after peace was declared, that their rulers had no intention of meeting engagements made under duress. The Germanic Confederation of 1815 was a sorry substitute for the vigorous empire anticipated, and under the lead of Prince Metternich, Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Holy Alliance at once adopted a reactionary policy which was hostile to the free movement of ideas and sought to allay the agitation of the popular mind. The turners represented a political tendency, and therefore incurred suspicion.

Beginning January 17, 1817, Jahn had delivered in Berlin a series of twenty-one semi-weekly public lectures on his favorite subject, German Nationality. Among the great number of persons from all classes who heard him some were offended by his blunt speech, and various extreme, unguarded, and misunderstood statements gave a handle to opponents who accused him of revolutionary principles. He was eccentric and independent always, and with his followers on the Turnplatz took exception to much that was customary in dress, speech, and manners. Disquieting rumors were in circulation regarding his conduct on the Rügen and Breslau excursions, and it was suggested that the large gatherings at the anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Leipsic were dangerous to public order and afforded a chance for demagogues. In the summer of 1817 Jahn was unfavorably criticized by two writers in the Berlin press, who attributed to his work in the Hasenheide injurious physical, mental, and moral effects; and the discussion did not cease when reports from the directors of three higher schools and a special investigation made by Medical Councilor Dr. von Könen, at the request of Minister von Schuckmann, had failed to sustain the objections raised, and on the contrary brought complete vindication.

Under the auspices of the Burschenschaften hundreds of students from many German universities met in Eisenach October 18, 1817, to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Leipsic and the tercentenary of the Protestant Reformation. There were appropriate exercises in the town and in the Hall of the Minnesingers at the Wartburg Castle, and when evening came all gathered about a huge bonfire for more speeches and singing. Suddenly Massmann appeared with friends carrying bundles of waste-paper done up and labeled to represent books. After recalling Luther’s burning of the papal bull he read off from a prepared list the titles of certain reactionary writings hostile to German unity, constitutional government, and free institutions; and as each item was reached the corresponding bundle was pitchforked into the fire with suitable comments. Common opinion credited Jahn with being the real originator of this student prank. It naturally aroused the anger of the authors concerned, among whom Kotzebue and Kamptz deserve mention here since their names appear again in the next paragraph. Metternich saw in the performance the indication of a widespread conspiracy.⁠[49]

A conference of monarchs at Aix-la-Chapelle in the fall of 1818 did much to confirm Frederick-William III of Prussia in his suspicions of intrigue. Metternich also laid before Prince Wittgenstein, the Prussian Minister of State, a memorial in which he declared that the Burschenschaften were nurseries of revolution and the Turnplätze preparatory schools for university disorders; both must be suppressed, for no palliative measures would suffice. A more forcible argument was the assassination of the German dramatist Kotzebue by Karl Ludwig Sand at Mannheim, on the 23d of March, 1819. Kotzebue was a paid spy of Russia and a reactionary writer who had attacked with especial bitterness the student unions and the turners. Sand was a turner, and had visited Jahn and others in Berlin the year before; he was a member of the Jena Burschenschaft, and had been present at the Wartburgfest. Without any proof of the fact, it was assumed that he had carried out the decision of an organization. On the night of July 13-14 Jahn was arrested and taken to the fortress of Spandau, on suspicion of “secret and most treasonable associations.” Meanwhile Kamptz had been made Prussian Minister of Police and clothed with extraordinary powers, and a special commission had been charged with the prosecution of demagogues. A little later a conference of German ministers adopted the oppressive Carlsbad Decrees, which were ratified by the Frankfort Diet September 20. These provided for censorship of the press, police supervision of the universities, and a central commission of seven to search out “the origin and ramification of revolutionary conspiracies and demagogic associations.” The Burschenschaft was dissolved, and January 2, 1820, Frederick-William III decreed that Turnen should absolutely cease throughout Prussia.

Jahn was kept at Spandau for a few days, transferred to Küstrin July 17, brought back to Berlin for trial early in October, and by an official report of February 15, 1820, the chief charges against him were declared null and void. A cabinet order of May 31 released him from arrest, but stipulated that he should reside, until further notice, in the fortress of Kolberg, on the Baltic, and placed him under the oversight of the commanding officer there. The 1000 thalers which he had been receiving from the state—800 as teacher of gymnastics and 200 from the Ministry of War—was to be continued. After prolonged investigation the supreme court at Breslau, by its decision of January 13, 1824, absolved him from all suspicion of complicity in the murder of Kotzebue, but sentenced him to two years additional confinement in a fortress on account of “repeated irreverent and insolent utterances regarding existing conditions and regulations in the state.” From this decision Jahn appealed, and sent in his “self-defence” (Selbstvertheidigung, finished October 9, 1824) to the supreme court at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, by which body he was entirely acquitted March 15, 1825.

But a cabinet order of May 3 forbade his living in Berlin or within a radius of ten miles from the capital, or in any city containing a university or higher school for boys; and wherever he settled he was to remain under police surveillance. The thousand-thaler pension remained unchanged. Jahn selected for his home the Thuringian town of Freyburg-on-the-Unstrut, about thirty miles west and south of Leipsic. The accession of Frederick-William IV to the throne of Prussia in 1840 was followed by the final removal of all police restrictions, and brought him also the long-expected decoration of the Iron Cross. By a cabinet order of June 6, 1842, gymnastics was “formally recognized as a necessary and indispensable part of male education and received into the circle of means for popular education.” Turnen began to revive with this, but though Jahn followed its development with interest and received hospitably the turners who visited his home, he took no active part in the movement. In 1844 he attended the centennial exercises of his first school, the Gymnasium at Salzwedel. Four years later he was present as a delegate in the German national assembly at Frankfort-on-the-Main, but returned to his home bitterly disappointed. He died at Freyburg, after a brief illness, October 15, 1852.⁠[50]

Although Prussia’s example in suppressing public Turnen was followed by other German states, the procedure was by no means universal. Thus the reaction did not directly affect the Kingdom of Württemberg, the Grand Duchies of Mecklenburg and Oldenburg, the Duchy of Brunswick, and the Free Cities of Hamburg and Lübeck; and it was not of long duration in the Kingdom of Bavaria. Between 1820 and 1840 the old organizations continued without interruption, therefore, in scattered cities, and new societies of older boys or young men who met regularly for exercise were formed in Hanover (1831), Frankfort-on-the-Main (1833), Plauen in Saxony (1834), and Pforzheim in Baden (1835). Even in Berlin Ernst Eiselen (1793-1846), Jahn’s faithful assistant, was allowed to open a private indoor and outdoor gymnasium in 1828. The venture prospered, and he added a gymnasium for girls in 1832, and four years later opened a branch institution in another part of the city. The latter was transferred to his helper Wilhelm Lübeck (1809-1879) in 1839. Both men trained many teachers of gymnastics, and wrote valuable manuals,⁠[51] bridging over in this way the gap between the older and the newer Turnen.

With the accession of Frederick-William IV to the Prussian throne in 1840 the hopes of his people were kindled afresh, and during the next decade all Germany was stirred by an agitation for reform which steadily gathered force until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1848 brought it to a climax. One sign of this quickened national and political life was a general revival of the Jahn gymnastics. The incorporation of physical training in school programs led to the formation of separate societies (Männerturnvereine) for adults, in which the bond of union was at first merely an agreement to meet for exercise at certain fixed hours; but this was soon followed by the adoption of by-laws, the appointment of boards of directors, and the fixing of definite dues. Partly as a result of excursions and exhibitions new societies sprang up everywhere, until at the close of the decade they numbered nearly three hundred. The desire for union which early showed itself was met by holding district conventions (Turntage) and gatherings for gymnastic exercises (Turnfeste). So we find turners from Frankfort, Hanau, and Mainz coming together in Frankfort-on-the-Main September 5, 1841, for the first of several annual Turnfeste, and on the Feldberg in 1844 inaugurating the important series of Feldbergfeste; and in Saxony, where progress had been especially active and orderly, the first Turntag at Dresden, October 31, 1846, attended by delegates from fifty-four societies. Periodicals devoted to the interests of the turners also began to make their appearance—Karl Euler’s “Jahrbücher der deutschen Turnkunst” (1843 and 1844) and “Turn-Zeitung” (1846 and 1847),⁠[52] “Der Turner” (1846-52),⁠[53] the “Mainzer Turnzeitung” (1846),⁠[54] and Ravenstein’s “Nachrichtsblatt für Deutschlands Turnanstalten und Turngemeinden” (1846 and 1847).⁠[55] But a second period of reaction set in with the revolutionary movements of 1849, in which many of the turners, the Saxon and South German ones especially, took an active part. In carrying out their policy of repression the various governments again disbanded or put under careful supervision the gymnastic societies, and not only those directly concerned in disturbances, but others which had been well-disposed and preferred to keep Turnen free from partisan politics. Of the three hundred societies in existence in 1849 hardly a third survived the next ten years. A few, however, continued vigorous and active, and this number included some of the largest and best Turnvereine in Saxony and Württemberg. Here Theodor Georgii started his “Turnblatt für und aus Schwaben” (1850-1853),⁠[56] followed by the “Esslinger Turnzeitung” (1854-1856),⁠[57] and this in turn was succeeded by the “Deutsche Turnzeitung” (since 1856),⁠[58] the present organ of the German Turnerschaft. In Dresden Moritz Kloss began to publish the “Neue Jahrbücher für die Turnkunst” (1855-1894).⁠[59]

Toward the close of the fifties signs of life began to multiply. The war of France and Sardinia with Austria (1859) and uncertainty as to future relations between France and the German states helped to rouse the slumbering societies and fill abandoned Turnplätze once more. A summons printed in the Deutsche Turnzeitung in March of 1860 and signed by Theodor Georgii and Karl Kallenberg resulted in the first general German convention and Turnfest, held at Coburg June 16-19 of that year—the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. More than a thousand adult turners were present, representing one hundred and thirty-nine cities and villages. Formal organization into a national body was impossible as yet, but notwithstanding this a feeling of union was established and a great impulse was given to further growth. The next year the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Hasenheide Turnplatz was celebrated by a second convention and Turnfest at Berlin, August 10-12. The attendance rose to 2812 adult turners, 1659 of them from outside the capital. Two hundred and sixty-two places were represented. This time a standing “Committee of the German Turnvereine,” composed of 15 members, was appointed to look after matters of general interest. The committee, at its meeting in Gotha the following December, organized by electing Theodor Georgii chairman and Dr. Ferdinand Goetz business manager; it decided that Turnvereine as such must hold themselves unconditionally aloof from all political partisanship, took action which put a damper on those who wished to have military exercises introduced in all societies, and charged Georg Hirth with an investigation which led to the first “Statistical Annual of German Turnvereine” (Leipsic, 1863).⁠[60] According to this there were on July 1, 1862, in 1153 towns and cities, 1284 societies, not less than 1050 of them organized since 1860. In 1863, the semi-centennial of the Battle of Leipsic, more than 20,000 turners gathered in that city for the third convention and Turnfest. Another statistical annual issued two years later⁠[61] showed an increase of 650 societies and more than 33,000 members over the numbers recorded in the first volume (July 1, 1862 to November 1, 1864).

Enthusiasm had reached such a pitch that a reaction was inevitable, and the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, by diverting attention and draining the resources of the people, interfered with further expansion and threatened to paralyze the existing Turnvereine. In the five years between November 1, 1864, and August 1, 1869, there had been a falling off of nearly 400 societies and 40,000 members, according to the statistical annual of 1871.⁠[62] A Turnfest planned for July 22-24, 1866, in Nuremberg, had to be given up; but two years later 168 delegates assembled for the fourth general convention in Weimar (July 20 and 21, 1868), and there formally organized the Deutsche Turnerschaft, a firm union of all German gymnastic societies, including the Austrian Germans. A constitution was adopted, the old committee was increased to 22 members, and Georgii and Goetz were continued in their positions as chairman and business manager. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 15,000 turners followed the colors to the field and many gymnasia were converted into hospitals. But in spite of this temporary check the war brought what Jahn and his followers had looked forward to for sixty years and more—the unification of Germany. Experiences of march, battlefield, and camp had driven home to the minds of all the need and value of physical efficiency, as nothing else could do it; and after the formation of the new Empire popular Turnen began, at first slowly and then more rapidly, to flourish as never before, and this time with the full approval of the state.

The following table shows the development that has taken place since the first statistical investigation was made, in 1862. The second column gives the number of German towns and cities in which there were popular gymnastic societies (Turnvereine), and the third column the total number of these societies irrespective of membership in the Turnerschaft. “Active” turners are those who actually take part in the gymnastic exercises.

General German Turnfeste and conventions (Turntage) of the Deutsche Turnerschaft (since 1868) have been held as follows:

The Bonn Turnfest fell in the period of decline, and one planned for Breslau in 1878 was given up because disturbed political conditions threatened its success; but beginning at Frankfort-on-the-Main two years later these great national gatherings have brought together not less than 10,000 turners, and at Hamburg and Nuremberg between 25,000 and 30,000 were present. Successive conventions have left the outward form of the German Turnerschaft almost unchanged, although various details have been modified. The Esslingen Turntag defined its object to be “the promotion of German gymnastics as a means to physical and moral vigor, and the fostering of patriotic sentiment and a spirit of racial unity among Germans.” In 1887 Georgii gave up his position as chairman of the committee and was succeeded by Alfred Maul, of Karlsruhe, who resigned in 1894. The next year Dr. Ferdinand Goetz was appointed to that office, and his place as business manager was given to Dr. Hugo Rühl, of Stettin. Dr. Goetz died October 13, 1915. Dr. Theodor Toeplitz then became chairman, but died June 2, 1919, and the position passed to Dr. Oskar Berger, of Aschersleben.