Denmark was the first European state to introduce physical training into its schools as an essential part of the course, and to prepare teachers of that subject by offering systematic instruction in theory and method of gymnastics. The leader in this movement, and its director for more than forty years, was Franz Nachtegall (1777-1847), the son of a Copenhagen tailor. His early education was received in a private school, and he had begun the study of theology in the university; but the death of his father prevented him from taking the final examination for his degree and threw upon him the support of an invalid mother. For a time he gave private lessons in Latin, history, and geography, but the small pay necessitated such long hours that his health began to suffer. From boyhood he had been interested in forms of physical activity, and as a university student gained considerable proficiency in fencing and vaulting. Inclination, therefore, and the reading of GutsMuths’s “Gymnastik für die Jugend”⁠[139] started him upon what was to become a life-work. He began to teach gymnastics, first to some students at his own home, and then, early in 1798, to a club of university students and tradesmen which he organized and directed. This brought him, a year later, an invitation to give lessons in the private school which Court Chaplain Christiani had opened in May of 1795, in accordance with the philanthropinistic ideals of Basedow and his followers. A rival institution, the Schouboe school which Nachtegall had himself attended as a boy, soon secured a share of his time for the same purpose. Other schools in the city, public as well as private, followed the example of these two, so that by 1805 at least nine were furnishing instruction in gymnastics to their pupils.

On November 5, 1799, having definitely decided to give himself wholly to the new calling, Nachtegall opened a private outdoor gymnasium in the yard of number 45 Østergade, the first institution in modern times devoted exclusively to physical training. The 5 pupils with whom he began had increased to 25 by the end of the year, and in the winter of 1803-04 the number reached 150, both children and adults, under six teachers whom he had himself trained. When in 1804 the King appointed him professor of gymnastics in the university he had already given, for two years, lectures on the history and method of physical training, with the help of a former pupil, to an audience made up of students there and in a college for teachers, with an admixture of military men. Meanwhile the training of military and naval cadets and the instruction in gymnastics given in schools for non-commissioned officers had also been entrusted to him, and when the King established a Training School for Teachers of Gymnastics in the Army (det militære gymnastiske Institut), by decree of August 25, 1804, Nachtegall became its first director. From this as a center the new teaching was to be spread throughout the entire army and navy, including the Norwegian regiments. Four years later civilians were also admitted to the courses, the institution now attempting to do for the schools and the people at large what it had already accomplished for the army, and to prepare instructors for teachers’ colleges and the elementary schools especially. The usual length of the course was fifteen to eighteen months, though the first pupil was graduated in August of 1809. By 1814 the civilian training school, caught in the stress of hard times, had ceased to exist. Meanwhile a total of only 31 students had completed its course, but 10 of these went out to occupy positions at Seminarier (teachers’ colleges), and so became in turn the instructors of other teachers-to-be.

The disastrous results of collisions between Denmark and Great Britain during the Napoleonic wars (1801-1814) and the economic distress which followed the loss of Norway (1814) made the period 1809-1825 an unfavorable one for educational reforms, and yet the efforts of the Danish government to introduce gymnastics into the curriculum of the schools did not stop altogether with provision for the training of teachers. An ordinance of November 7, 1809, stated in general that grammar or secondary schools (“de lærde Skoler”) should furnish instruction in gymnastics “when and where it was possible” to do so. In the school code of 1814 gymnastics was made an integral part of the course for boys in all elementary schools (Folkeskoler)—nearly three decades before any other European country took such action. Wherever the teacher possessed the requisite ability he was to give his pupils a daily lesson in gymnastics, outside of school hours proper, and for this purpose every school must have the necessary apparatus and an outdoor space of 800-1200 Alen (3200-4800 square feet). At the Seminarier gymnastics became a required subject under the regulations of 1818, and in 1821 Nachtegall was appointed Gymnastikdirektør (Director of Gymnastics), with oversight of both civil and military gymnastics throughout the state. But with here and there a notable exception, the result of so much favorable legislation left much to be desired. Teachers were most of them without training, hard times interfered with the purchase of grounds and apparatus, and appreciation of the importance of school gymnastics as a pedagogical measure was by no means general.

Beginning with the middle twenties and lasting till the death of King Frederick VI (December 3, 1839) there was some improvement. In Copenhagen itself gymnastics was now introduced in many public and private schools, and some of the village schools in Copenhagen county took similar action, assisted by the government (1826), which desired to see all the schools in a single county reached before further statewide measures were attempted. Within a few years this had been accomplished. November 25, 1826, a circular was sent out to the school authorities all over Denmark urging them to do what they could to favor instruction in gymnastics. In the summer of the next year a considerable number of teachers from Copenhagen county came to the city for a course in gymnastics. They felt the need of some opportunity for practice with children along with the instruction they themselves received. At Nachtegall’s suggestion the King therefore ordered (August 21, 1827) that 40 to 50 children from one of the public schools should be received at det militære gymnastiske Institut, for instruction in gymnastics, and that this public school should establish such relations with the Institute that both together would constitute a teachers’ college which might serve as a normal school of gymnastics (Normalskole for Gymnastikken), where not only the military and civil pupils at the Institute but also teachers in public and private schools could have an opportunity to conduct classes under supervision. The Normal School, under this new arrangement, was opened on January 28, 1828 (at the same time a new building, at Solvgaden barracks, was ready for use), and during that year more than 200 teachers were in attendance, 160 boys from the garrison school coming to the Institute to serve as a model school. In summer their place was taken by pupils from charity schools.

June 25, 1828, the King approved the manual of gymnastics⁠[140] for use in the middle and common schools (Folkeskolerne) on which Nachtegall and four other members of a commission appointed for the purpose had been at work for a year. This was the first book of the sort to be authorized by any European government. Copies were sent (4000 of them) at the King’s expense to all Danish schools and school authorities. On the same day, June 25, was issued an order which required the immediate introduction of instruction in gymnastics in all schools throughout the state. A city inspector of gymnastics was appointed in Copenhagen, where every child received three lessons a week and the teachers were most of them non-commissioned officers. It was estimated that by the end of 1830 2000 elementary schools (Almueskoler) were already complying with the order, and that by the time of the King’s death 2500 out of the (approximately) 2600 public schools in Denmark were making at least some provision for systematic bodily exercise.

The secondary schools were at first slow to take adequate measures, but a special order of September 20, 1831, directed that this be done just as soon as circumstances permitted. An administrative order of February 14, 1832, made the introduction of instruction in gymnastics a necessary condition of permission to open any private school for boys. September 14, 1833, Nachtegall’s manual and regulations for secondary schools⁠[141] received the King’s approval, and it was published the following year. In 1836 he was sent on a tour of inspection among the Seminarier, to see what was being done in them and to give any needful counsel and suggestions. He found the interest in gymnastics general, but lack of sufficient apparatus in some places and in others faulty methods, and therefore arranged to have the teachers of gymnastics at three of the Seminarier take a summer course at the Normal School in 1837. In obedience to an order of March 7, 1838, he made a second tour, primarily to inspect the Latin schools, but took advantage of the opportunity to visit the Seminarier again.

Hitherto it had been boys and young men alone who were reached by gymnastics in the schools, but an order of March 28, 1838, given in response to Nachtegall’s proposal, established an experimental school for girls. Thirty pupils, ranging in age from six to fifteen years, were selected from among the girls at the garrison school, and beginning in the spring of the same year these received three lessons a week from five teachers (three sergeants and two women) at the Military Gymnastic Institute, under the general direction of Nachtegall and a physician. The success of this experiment suggested a normal school of gymnastics for women (Normalskole for Kvindegymnastik). An order of February 20, 1839, approved the plan, and prescribed that women teachers, and others who wished it, should receive an opportunity at the Institute to become acquainted with methods of teaching and that the exercises practised there and the mode of progression adopted should serve as a model for the schools for girls which introduced gymnastics. These latter were also put under Nachtegall’s supervision. The number of pupils at the Normal School now increased. In the summer of 1839 lessons in the new subject were begun with girls in the royal navy schools (Søetatens Skoler), and many other Copenhagen schools took a similar step.

After the death of Frederick VI, December 3, 1839, Nachtegall’s own efforts (he was now sixty-two years old) began to slacken. In 1840 and 1843 he made new tours of inspection among the Seminarier. In 1842 he turned over to la Cour the headship of det militære gymnastiske Institut, but continued to discharge the duties of Gymnastikdirektør until his death, which occurred May 12, 1847. He was not the inventor of a system of his own, but borrowed his types of exercise from Dessau and Schnepfenthal, and used the manuals of GutsMuths as a guide. He was a good teacher and organizer, tactfully winning the goodwill and support of leading men, skilful in accommodating himself to actual conditions, and indefatigable in his efforts to advance the work to which he had committed himself with so much devotion. Denmark owes it to him that during the first third of the nineteenth century she held the leading place among European nations in the realm of physical education.⁠[142]

Captain Niels Georg la Cour (1797-1876), who succeeded Nachtegall as Director of Gymnastics in Denmark (1847-1870), met with little success in his endeavor to improve conditions. As head of the Military Institute he published a new manual for the army, upon which was based his later manual for the elementary schools.⁠[143] But interest was now at low ebb. Beginning in 1859 it came to be the practice to supply the need of teachers of gymnastics in the Seminarier by “loaning” them non-commissioned officers for a term of three years. (This continued to be the rule until 1901!) In the schools of Copenhagen, also, and in garrison towns, such instruction was in the hands of military men. But in the army the broad educational aims of gymnastics had been subordinated to mere attainment of skill, so that the soldier too often regarded it with dread as a means of discipline and punishment. These officers, too, held themselves aloof from the general school life and from the other teachers. When la Cour, who possessed more energy than tact and lacked Nachtegall’s conciliatory manner, called attention to neglect or defective equipment revealed by his tours of inspection, and when official circulars directed the school authorities to exercise a keener and more vigorous oversight, the result in many cases was to arouse a feeling of irritation and indignation.

Upon la Cour’s retirement from the position of Gymnastikdirektør in 1870 this office was abolished, and a new one was created—that of inspector of gymnastics (Gymnastikinspektør) for civil schools only. But there was no actual separation from military control, for until 1904 it was the army which supplied candidates for the place. The first man to fill it (1870-1886) was Col. Johann Theodor Wegener (1810-1886). He chose for his assistant Captain (later Lieut.-Col.) Julius Amsinck (1833-1902), director of the Military Institute⁠[144] 1867-1885, who later became his successor (1886-1899). Amsinck published in 1883 a manual for school use, based on that of la Cour.

After the war of 1864 with Prussia and Austria, in which the Danes lost Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg, there was a period of great depression, soon followed, however, by a variety of measures looking toward national regeneration. In two institutions which date from this time, the rifle clubs (Skytteforeninger) and the people’s or folk high schools (Folkehøjskolerne), gymnastics was among the means employed, as it had been in Germany by Jahn and his followers a half-century before. For some years before the outbreak of the war the attitude of Germany in the Schleswig-Holstein dispute had been growing more and more threatening, and in January, 1861, an artillery captain, Valdemar Mønster, proposed in the columns of the Danish paper Fædrelandet the organization of voluntary clubs on the plan of the English National Rifle Association, in order that young men subject to military service might have opportunity to become familiar with the use of weapons and fit themselves to defend the country’s right by force of arms. The suggestion met with general approval, and a few months later a Central Committee, with Captain Mønster as its secretary, was formed to guide and assist the rifle clubs which were being started all over Denmark.⁠[145] By the close of 1863 there were over a hundred of them in existence.

At first the Skytteforeninger confined their attention to rifle shooting and military drill, but after the war had given great headway to the whole movement gymnastics began to be introduced as a related activity, and gradually won for itself a more and more prominent place. A firmer organization had now been effected, for the smaller clubs, whose number had increased to several hundred, united into county rifle clubs (Amts-Skytteforeninger). Denmark is divided for administrative purposes into eighteen counties or Amter, and in 1871 the original Central Committee was succeeded by a Board of Directors (Overbestyrelse) chosen by representatives of the various units. According to information gathered by the new Overbestyrelse, eleven clubs practised gymnastics in 1872, and nine of these had 2100 members actively engaged, of whom 763 belonged in Svendborg county alone, where the efficient leadership and persevering efforts of Captain Edvard Nielsen had contributed largely toward such a favorable showing and had made that club a model for others.

The exercises were necessarily limited at the start to what could be done in the open air and with little or no apparatus, or use was made of barns or rooms for public gatherings. In 1871, at Ryslinge (island of Fünen), the first special Øvelseshus (house for exercise, gymnasium) was erected. Other places were quick to follow the example, so that by 1897 there were nearly 300 such buildings, provided by the club members themselves, and in them 10,000 young countrymen were practising gymnastics. Trained instructors could be borrowed from the army in garrison towns and the regions adjacent to them, or school teachers were employed or men who had returned from military service. Many clubs, in order to secure better qualified squad leaders, organized brief teachers’ courses (Instruktionsmøder) in charge of army instructors. When various people’s high schools, notably those at Askov and Vallekilde, opened their doors for such leaders’ courses (Delingsførerkursus) in gymnastics they became an important source of supply. The first course of this kind at Vallekilde was given in 1878. A handbook of gymnastics (“Vejledning i Gymnastik”) prepared for the rifle clubs by Hærens Gymnastikskole in 1882, at the instance of the Overbestyrelse, does not appear to have been widely used, but Captain Amsinck’s manual of 1883 was made the basis of instruction.

At the general Skyttefest (gathering of rifle clubs for competitive shooting) in 1869 at Horsens the Svendborg county club, the university club from Copenhagen, and others gave exhibitions of gymnastics which must have contributed toward its spread, and this was still more true of the general Gymnastikfest at Svendborg in 1878 and the general Skytte- og Gymnastikfest at Nyborg in 1881, both of them arranged by the Svendborg county rifle club. At the former there were nearly 1100 participants, who came from 16 towns and 110 country parishes. Six hundred were from Svendborg county alone. County and lesser Skyttefester exerted a similar influence. Advantage was taken of the interest thus aroused to seek state aid for the purchase of apparatus. Captain Edvard Nielsen proposed such a measure at the meeting of delegates in 1879, and a motion requesting the Overbestyrelse to take suitable steps led to an initial annual grant of 2000 Kr. from the government, increased to 5000 Kr. in 1882 and to 6000 Kr. the following year. Attempts to obtain similar grants to assist in the erection of Øvelseshuse and the giving of courses of instruction for squad leaders (Delingsførere) met with no success at this time.

The people’s or folk high schools (Folkehøjskoler),⁠[146] like the rifle clubs, date from before the Schleswig-Holstein war of 1864; but their great popularity and rapid spread began with the period of reform which succeeded it. They are not public institutions, though nearly all now receive a certain amount of government aid, but are privately owned in most cases, or belong to a self-perpetuating corporation, and depend for their success upon the personality of the director and his associates. The total number opened in the years 1844-1911 was 143, and 80 of these were in existence at the close of the period. The great majority of the students are young countrymen eighteen to twenty-five years of age, who after completing the required course at free rural elementary schools have been engaged in practical agriculture and household duties, either at home or on some model farm. The attendance in the years 1864-1884 averaged about 3000 annually, but doubled in the following decade, and in the school year 1898-1899 reached a total of 3491 young men and 2646 young women. In 1906 the numbers at the different high schools ranged from 10 to 400; 53 per cent of the pupils were males, and it was estimated that a third of the young people among the rural population passed through these schools, although attendance is altogether voluntary. A few are coeducational, but the usual plan is to offer a winter course of five to six months (November-May) to young men, and a summer one of three months or more to young women. An hour a day is allotted to gymnastics as a rule.

The people’s high schools and the rifle clubs have stood in close relation with each other, some of the former organizing clubs of their own, or supplying leaders for neighboring clubs, and others, like the ones at Askov and Vallekilde, arranging for teachers’ courses in gymnastics and rifle-shooting under professional instructors from the army. The aims of the two institutions are similar in many ways. Although the people’s high schools all give instruction in handwork and household economics for women and many offer courses in agriculture, horticulture, masonry, carpentry, etc., their chief purpose is cultural—to mold character and ideals, inspire patriotism, train the students to think for themselves, reveal the dignity and possibilities of country life, and lay the foundation for later work in local agricultural schools and schools of household economics. The lecture method prevails in the classroom. Courses in history and literature may be considered the backbone of the curriculum, with frequent discussion periods and much singing of folk and patriotic songs and hymns. Students room in the school dormitories, and are thus brought into close and sympathetic association with each other and with their teachers,—the foundation of that spirit of coöperation which is so characteristic of rural life in Denmark today.

The revival of general interest in physical education in Denmark had its origin thus among young adults, and not in the schools. At first it was the GutsMuths gymnastics as developed by Nachtegall which they practised in the rifle clubs and the people’s high schools, with the gradual addition of exercises borrowed from the Jahn Turnen; but beginning in 1884 the Ling or Swedish system was introduced, and made rapid headway until by the close of the century it had been generally adopted in the people’s high schools, had outstripped its Danish-German rival in the rifle clubs, and formed the basis of a new official manual for the schools.⁠[147]

It was not to be expected that the friends of the GutsMuths-Nachtegall gymnastics would watch the encroachments of the foreign system without a vigorous protest. The struggle began as early as 1885, with army officers almost without exception opposed to the innovation, and a few years later was at its height. The attention of school authorities was drawn to the subject by conflicting claims put forward in the press and by what the followers of Ling were already accomplishing in Denmark, and some of them recognized that with the help of the new exercises school gymnastics might perhaps be resuscitated, especially in the country, where conditions were quite unsatisfactory.

The most important result of all this agitation was the appointment (April 5, 1887) of a commission of three by the ministry of church and school affairs (Ministeriet for Kirke- og Undervisningsvæsenet), to recommend improvements in gymnastics as taught in the schools and to present plans for the founding and organizing of an institution in which men and women should be trained as teachers of gymnastics. Its members were Lieutenant-Colonel Amsinck, the new state inspector of gymnastics, chairman, communal physician (Kommunelæge) Axel Hertel, and Professor K. Kroman. They spent several weeks in Stockholm, at the Centralinstitut and in the schools, and then went to Berlin for a similar purpose. Upon their return they submitted a report (April, 1888) containing a number of definite suggestions for the better organization of physical education, the training of teachers, and the grouping of exercises in a lesson plan. They also proposed the appointment of a second and larger commission which should prepare a new manual of school gymnastics along the lines indicated. This body was accordingly named November 30, 1889. It included the former members, with the addition of Kommunelæge Chr. Fenger, regimental surgeon (Korpslæge) Johan Kier, Cand. polyt. N. H. Rasmussen, and the head of Hærens Gymnastikskole, Captain L. V. Schleppegrell. The result of their labors was the “Handbook of Gymnastics” (Haandbog i Gymnastik) published in 1899⁠[148] and at once authorized by the government for use in all schools under its control. The new manual follows the general principles of the Ling gymnastics and adopts practically all of the Swedish exercises, but uses also many of the forms already current in Denmark, and introduces exercises on the horizontal and parallel bars, flying rings, and trapeze along with others which require the apparatus commonly found in gymnasia in Sweden.

The commission of 1887 had proposed that the government should start an institution for the training of men and women as teachers of gymnastics (Gymnastik Læreranstalt), with a two-years course of study and practice. But in view of the unsettled condition of the whole question the authorities were unwilling to take such action. Professor Hans Olrik, director of the State Teachers’ Course (Statens etaarige Lærerkursus, later known as the Lærerhøjskole) then suggested, in 1897, that instruction in gymnastics be included as a separate division in that course. The government gave its approval to the plan, the Rigsdag voted the necessary funds, 13,500 Kr., and on March 30, 1898, an official announcement of the organization and character of the new course (det etaarige Gymnastikkursus) was published. It was opened September 1 of that year in N. H. Rasmussen’s Gymnastikhus on Vodroffs Vej, under the direction of Cand. theol. K. A. Knudsen.⁠[149] The next year (1899) Amsinck retired from his position as state inspector of gymnastics. His successor, Lieutenant-Colonel Ramsing (1837-1904), already over sixty years old when he was appointed to the office, died August 18, 1904, and now, for the first time in the history of the inspectorship, it was given (September 2) to a non-military man, K. A. Knudsen, the director of the one-year teachers’ course.⁠[150]

The training school for civilian teachers of gymnastics (det civile gymnastiske Lærerinstitut) founded in 1808, and the normal school of gymnastics (Normalskole for Gymnastikken) opened twenty years later were both short-lived and both had been appendages of det militære gymnastiske Institut; since 1859 the teachers of gymnastics in the Seminarier had been non-commissioned officers in the army, assigned to this duty for three-year periods only; and though the non-military schools were given a state inspector of their own in 1870, this position had always been held by an army officer. But with det etaarige Gymnastikkursus of 1898-1899, the Haandbog of 1899, and the appointment of Knudsen to the state inspectorship in 1904 gymnastics in the Danish schools entered upon an independent career. This fact was made plain by a new school law (1899) which prescribed, among other things, that no one should be regularly employed as teacher in the public schools unless he had received professional training in a Seminarium. The nur-Turnlehrer was thus to give place to the auch-Turnlehrer, an integral part of the teaching staff, and payment for instruction in gymnastics was to be at the same rate as for any other subject in the curriculum. It was therefore chiefly Seminarium-trained teachers, both men and women, who attended the one-year course, and from 1901 onward examinations based on the Haandbog of 1899 were given to all candidates for graduation at the sixteen Seminarier.⁠[151]

In the higher (secondary) schools also gymnastics was to be taken out of the hands of special or professional teachers and entrusted to instructors who give a part of their time to other subjects. University graduates already occupying positions in such schools and university students who looked forward to teaching as a profession were therefore found among the pupils in the one-year course, and in 1905 the government decided to permit the work of that course to be spread over three or four years in the case of students who wished to complete it at the same time they were carrying on their studies in the university. April 1, 1911, the one-year course ceased to be a part of Statens Lærerhøjskole, and September 1, 1911, under a new name and as an independent institution (Statens Gymnastik Institut), it moved into a building of its own.⁠[152] Two years before this (November 1, 1909) the authorities of the University at Copenhagen had added to the faculty of that institution, on a six-year appointment, a Docent in anatomy, physiology, and theory of gymnastics (Johannes Lindhard, a physician), under whose direction students who desired to add instruction in gymnastics to other teaching after graduation were allowed to take one of their minor courses in preparation for the final examination (Skoleembedseksamen) leading to a degree, and so qualifying them to become candidates for positions in higher schools. The instruction in practical gymnastics and games was to be given at Statens Gymnastik-Institut, or under the oversight of its director, and was to be at least equal to that given in the one-year course.

The demand for teachers trained in the Haandbog of 1899 could not be met by graduates from these more extended and thorough courses of preparation, however. For men and women already employed in the schools who could not afford to leave their regular duties the state therefore arranged short vacation courses of four weeks each. Thirty-four attended the first one of these, given in Copenhagen in 1899. The next year it was decided to move them out into the country, to Seminarier and Folkehøjskoler, and the numbers rose at once to 200. Between 1900 and 1911 the work thus offered was completed by 1027 men and 1680 women—an average attendance of 225. In 1913 it reached 349. Still briefer courses, of a single week’s duration (Instruktionskursus), brought a measure of preparation to older teachers who were unable to leave their homes, and these were often attended by the same persons for several years in succession. Two thousand five hundred and twenty-six men and 519 women were enrolled in them in the years 1901-1911. The total number of teachers trained in the newer gymnastics, in the state one-year course, the university, the sixteen Seminarier, and the longer and shorter vacation courses reaches therefore well into the thousands, and to these should be added the other thousands who have attended the month-long leaders’ courses (Delingsførerkursus) arranged by the rifle clubs or their Overbestyrelse since 1889.

The Danes have not been the only ones to profit by the agencies just enumerated. Up to 1911 the one-year course had been taken by 15 foreigners (4 men and 11 women), from Norway, Finland, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, England, and America; and 49 foreigners (25 men and 24 women) had completed vacation courses. At the invitation of Yorkshire school authorities Gymnastikinspektør Knudsen conducted a special vacation course for English teachers at Scarborough in 1905, and two graduates of the one-year course, H. G. Junker and H. P. Langkilde, were afterwards employed to train teachers in the schools of West Riding, Yorkshire. Langkilde was engaged by the British ministry of war in 1906 to introduce the Ling gymnastics in the army gymnasium at Aldershot. Two other graduates of the one-year course, Braae-Hansen (in 1908, as director) and Frøken P. Brandt (in 1909), were installed as instructors in state-supported training schools for men and women teachers of gymnastics, organized at the Southwestern Polytechnic Institute in London. In 1908 Junker began to give one-month courses for English teachers at Silkeborg, in Denmark, which have been largely attended by both men and women (more than 80 in each of the years 1910 and 1911), and in 1910 he opened in the same place a one-year course for Englishmen. Danish women have also served as teachers of gymnastics at various English teachers’ colleges and in the schools of that country.

The school code of 1814 had made practice in gymnastics obligatory, in the case of boys, at all elementary schools (Folkeskoler), whether town or country. A law of 1904 extended its provisions to include girls, as well; and within six years of that date more than 95 per cent of the girls in town and city elementary schools and nearly 50 per cent of those in the country were receiving such instruction. Lack of suitable rooms was the greatest difficulty which confronted the country schools. To meet this condition the Rigsdag voted that beginning with April 1, 1907, the state should bear one-half of the expense (up to 15,000 Kr.) incurred by any community in building a gymnasium (Gymnastikhus) for its schools. Two years later the grant was increased, so as to include town schools, and made to cover the cost of providing playgrounds also. It became necessary to withhold state aid after April 1, 1911, on account of financial stringency, but up to that time nearly 300 gymnasia had been erected in the country regions, at an average cost of about 5000 Kr. By the following year (1912) 488 country schools had gymnasia of their own, and 559 others were using rented gymnasia, usually those which belonged to rifle clubs. The other two-thirds of the 3500 or more country schools were obliged to content themselves with exercise out of doors on the playgrounds, which are gradually being equipped with such gymnastic apparatus as stall bars, Swedish horizontal bars, bucks, vaulting boxes, etc.

Not content with merely providing facilities for physical education, the Rigsdag also appropriated funds sufficient for the appointment of 17 Gymnastikkonsulenter (14 men and 3 women, most of them trained in the one-year course) or assistants to the state inspector of gymnastics, who are able to visit nearly 900 schools a year, arousing interest in teachers, pupils, and parents, demonstrating the proper handling of a class, meeting the teachers for conference and suggestions, and in general working for a better understanding of the object and means of physical education and greater uniformity in methods. A step which has done much to improve the standing of gymnastics in higher schools was the decision to grade pupils on their work in this subject, in connection with two of their public examinations (the Mellemskoleeksamen, since 1907, and Realeksamen, since 1908, but not yet in the final or Studentereksamen), and to give to such a grade (Aarskarakter) equal value with those secured in any other branch of study or practice.

Starting thus among young adults in the people’s high schools and rifle clubs, the newer gymnastics has made its way into the elementary schools and the Seminarier and thence into the higher schools and the university. In contrast with what one sees in Sweden, the instruction is almost wholly in the hands of civilians, regular members of the teaching staff who give only a portion of their time to this branch; the average number of pupils in a class is only about 30, instead of the 150 or even 200 sometimes led by a single teacher across the Sound; and the rooms provided for exercise are smaller and more numerous—so frequently two for a single school that this may be considered the rule. On the other hand the Danish teacher receives at most a ten-months’ course of special training, in contrast with the two years usually spent at the Stockholm Centralinstitut.

It is now more than a hundred years since Denmark made gymnastics an essential part of the curriculum of its public schools, antedating Prussia in the step by over a quarter of a century; but her German neighbor, on the other hand, takes precedence in the matter of systematic efforts to foster games among school children. Minister von Gossler’s playground order was issued in 1882, fourteen years before its Danish counterpart, and the German “Central Committee for the Promotion of Games,” formed in Berlin in 1891, was six years old before a corresponding body was organized in Copenhagen. The beginnings of the movement, in each country, reveal the influence of English customs, and the ball games of the English schoolboy were among the first forms introduced. In certain of the higher schools of Denmark, particularly in boarding schools located in the country, open-air games were already firmly established when in 1891 the Copenhagen Playground Association (Legepladsforening) first undertook to bring them within the reach of children in public elementary schools (Folkeskoler), by opening playgrounds in various sections of the city and organizing the play-life there. This attempt suddenly took on national proportions when Wilhelm Bardenfleth, Minister of Church and School Affairs, on August 31, 1896, sent out his “Circular to all school authorities regarding the introduction and regular use of games for children in the public schools.”⁠[153]

Games which require agility and strength, the Minister said, deserve a place side by side with formal gymnastics, not only as healthful forms of recreation, but because they train the players to make decisions promptly and carry them out energetically, rouse a feeling of responsibility, require subordination and coöperation, and play a large part in the development of personality. Hitherto this valuable educational agency, which supplements, but should not replace, gymnastics, has been left too much to the initiative of the young themselves and the results have been largely a matter of chance. School authorities should make it their business to provide playgrounds of sufficient size and conveniently located. Teachers must interest themselves in the matter, joining the pupils in their sports, preserving order, and supplying the necessary supervision and direction, and a place ought to be found in the curriculum for such activities, in addition to voluntary practice outside of school hours. The Minister announces his readiness to render assistance in furthering the movement, by including the subject of organized play in the annual vacation courses for teachers. Attention is called to a list of books containing directions for a variety of games. The Commission of 1889, appointed to work out a new manual of gymnastics, was also preparing a brief guide to the use of appropriate games,⁠[154] and this, it was hoped, could be sent out to all public and private schools.

On December 1, 1896, three months after the appearance of the Bardenfleth circular, the Copenhagen Playground Association proposed to the ministry an annual grant from state funds to be used in making it effective, and offered to form a committee which should undertake to manage the practical details of the project. The suggestion was approved, the Rigsdag voted an appropriation of 5000 Kr. a year for three years, and the expenditure of the fund was entrusted to a group of men and women from all parts of the country who met in Copenhagen April 11, 1897, at the invitation of the Playground Association, and constituted themselves a National Committee for Promoting Group Games among School Children.⁠[155] The original membership included Fru Rigmor Bendix, Copenhagen, chairman; school principal Emil Slomann, Frederiksberg, vice-chairman; wholesale merchant Carl H. Melchior, Copenhagen, treasurer; Dr. med. H. Forchhammer, Copenhagen, secretary; district physician Axel Hertel, Copenhagen, and school director Joakim Larsen, Frederiksberg, additional members of the executive committee; and fifteen other persons residing in various parts of Denmark, among them Professor Poul la Cour of the Askov people’s high school, and Cand. theol. K. A. Knudsen, then living in Frederiksberg.

The regulations adopted at the time of organization have governed the operations of the Committee ever since. They define its object as the furtherance of group games in the open air. Among the means employed are lectures and the distribution of pamphlets explaining its work, guidance in the use of games, the training of teachers, grants of money to help in procuring apparatus and hiring teachers, and assistance in securing and equipping playgrounds. As a rule it is expected that in each case the community concerned, or private individuals, will provide an amount equal to that furnished by the Committee from the funds placed at its disposal. The Committee also reserves the right to supervise activities toward which it contributes, and to require annual reports regarding them; but local organizations are independent in matters of detail. It does not solicit contributions outside of the state grant, although it has a small income from other sources. Effort has been largely centered, from the start, on two lines of work, the preparation of teachers to act as play leaders in the schools, and the furnishing of expert advice and direct assistance in particular cases where these are requested.

Minister Bardenfleth, in his circular of 1896, had offered to include instruction and practice in group games in the annual vacation courses for teachers conducted by the state. Special courses of this sort, under the direction of the secretary of the National Committee, were therefore provided for men in the summers of 1897-1900, and for women in 1898 and 1899, and the subject of games was added to the vacation course in gymnastics for women in 1897 and 1898. Since the fall of 1898 group games have been taken up as a regular part of the state’s one-year course in gymnastics. In the spring of 1897 and again in 1898 the Committee offered short courses of its own for women teachers, especially those in the Copenhagen schools. With its help group games were made a part of various teachers’ courses organized primarily for other purposes, and later it arranged a long series of special courses, beginning and repetition, term-time and vacation, for men, for women, and for both sexes.

The usual length of these special courses has been three weeks. Men have devoted four or five hours daily to the work, or a total of eighty to ninety hours, and most of it has been practical, with chief emphasis on the more complicated games, such as Langbold (a Danish-Norwegian ball game), cricket, football, and hockey. The aim has been to give a complete understanding of the theory of each game, and enough practice in it to make the teacher a capable guide for his pupils. Not much time has been allotted to the simpler games. In the early courses for women instruction was more elementary, and limited at first to a total of eighteen to twenty-four hours, since most of the participants were quite unused to strenuous bodily exercise. Langbold was the favorite game, but later football was found to be excellent for young girls up to the age of puberty, and hockey after that period. The amount of time given to daily practice was also increased, until it reached three or four hours, and the total advanced from between thirty and thirty-five hours to between fifty and sixty. Hockey steadily gained in popularity, but children’s games received relatively more attention than was the case in courses for men. Fr. Knudsen, secretary of the National Committee, has published a handbook of games, a guide to hockey, and with Ahrent Otterstrøm a football manual.

The demands upon the National Committee in its other field of effort, the giving of expert advice and direct assistance in particular cases, have been numerous and constant from the start. In 1897 help was given to 43 schools or communities; 64 others were added to the list the following year, and 120 in the period 1890-1901, and since that time the additions have averaged about 25 a year, so that by the end of 1913 a total of 532 had received aid. The needs of public elementary schools (Folkeskoler) have naturally been the first to receive attention, but a few Realskoler and Højskoler in the provinces are included in the number. Experience demonstrated the importance of competent oversight, and since April 1, 1901, assistance has been granted in new cases only when a professionally trained teacher of gymnastics is employed, or a graduate of one of the state or Committee courses in group games. Tours of inspection are made by the secretary of the National Committee, who visited 387 schools or communities in the years 1900-1913. Other trips were made to give advice or help in the laying out of playgrounds. Commonly the Committee first suggests the games which seem most appropriate in the locality concerned, and then sends on the necessary apparatus (for ball games, exclusively), except such as can be bought on the spot without much expense. A sum of money to be used in procuring or improving playgrounds is sometimes added; but the original idea of providing compensation for teachers has not been carried out.