Bernhard Zimmermann (sports scientist)

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Bernhard Zimmermann (born July 10, 1886 in Emden , † February 10, 1952 in Oxford ) was a German sports scientist . The National Socialists forced him to resign from office (1937) and to emigrate (1938) because he was not ready to part with his Jewish wife.

Life

After studying English, German and history (1905–1910) in Kiel , Berlin and Göttingen as well as a gymnastics teacher training course with examination (1908) and victory at the German Academic Olympia (1908) in Leipzig , Bernhard Zimmermann became head of sport after the state examination appointed at the University of Göttingen . After the outbreak of the First World War , he was a soldier, and in 1915 he fell into French captivity after being poisoned by gas, from which he was released in 1920.

Zimmermann was first a teacher in Hanover before he was appointed academic gymnastics and sports teacher at the University of Göttingen in 1921. He made early publications and educational films on motor learning. In the winter semester of 1924 he founded the first institute for physical exercise at a Prussian university, where he worked with Herman Nohl , among others . In 1928 he was appointed director of the institute, in 1930 he received his doctorate as Dr. phil. with Karl Brandi with a thesis on the historical development of academic riding at the University of Göttingen. Zimmermann had made sports educational films at an early stage and thus decisively shaped the methodology of physical exercises.

From 1933 Bernhard Zimmermann was not only successful in Göttingen, but because of his modern "sporty" methods from Carl Krümmel he was given responsibility for training and further education at the institutes for physical exercise in military sports at the Neustrelitz Driving School . In 1937 he was retired because of his Jewish wife and in 1938 emigrated to Scotland to join Kurt Hahn , for whom he worked as a physical education teacher at the private school in Gordonstoun , and later also in Aberdyfi . The content of the Outward Bound movement and the Duke of Edinburgh Award, which is presented for social commitment and physical performance, go back to Zimmermann . Zimmermann's son translated the surname and, as Mr Peter Carpenter, became Director of Studies in Education at Churchill College, Cambridge University . With the support of the Duke of Edinburgh, he became Chairman of the Kurt Hahn Trust in 1986, which administers the Duke of Edinburgh Award. The Duke and Peter Carpenter were students of Kurt Hahn in Gordonstoun.

After the Second World War , the British military administration offered Zimmermann to take over the management of the Institute for Physical Exercise in Göttingen; later he was offered the management of the sports college in the British zone. When he declined out of consideration for his wife, the job was offered to Carl Diem , who created the Cologne Sports University . On the occasion of his 100th birthday, Zimmermann was honored by the University of Göttingen with a plaque on his former home. The Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History awards the Bernhard Zimmermann Medal to distinguished sports historians and has included him in the Lower Saxony Sports Honor Gallery.

Publications

  • History of the riding institute of the University of Göttingen from the foundation of the university to the present: A contribution to the history of physical exercises. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1930.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Valentin funnel's heirs. The theory-practice problem in the physical exercises at the Georg-August University (1734–1987). In: H.-G. Schlotter (Hrsg.): The history of the constitution and the departments of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-525-35847-4 , pp. 284-294.
  2. ↑ Karin Bosch: The meaning and function of the Neustrelitz leadership school in the system of National Socialist physical education. Univ.-Diss. Essen, 2008 ( online ).

literature

  • W. Buss, F. Nitsch: In the beginning there wasn't Carl Diem - the founding phase of the Cologne Sports University 1945–1947 . Mecke, Duderstadt 1986, ISBN 3-923453-22-1 .
  • W. Henze (eds.): B. Zimmermann - H. Nohl - K. Hahn: A contribution to reform pedagogy (= series of publications by the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History, Vol. 9). Mecke, Duderstadt 1991, ISBN 3-923453-16-7 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Zimmermann, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sports educator
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Emden
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1952
Place of death Oxford