Bess Mensendieck

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Bess M. Mensendieck (born July 1, 1864 in New York City , † January 27, 1957 , actually Elizabeth Marguerite de Varel Mensendieck ) was an American doctor and gymnastics teacher of Dutch descent. She is one of the most important founders of early breathing and body pedagogy in Europe and America.

Life

Bess Mensendieck grew up in New York and studied medicine in Zurich. In order to complete her practical knowledge of movement, posture and breathing, she took singing lessons in Paris and continued to study gymnastics with Geneviève Stebbins in New York. Here she also learned the movement systems from François Delsarte and the Swedish gymnastics from Pehr Henrik Ling .

Her particular concern was the improvement of posture and structure of the women of her time. Based on her medical background, she built her gymnastics according to the Mensendieck system strictly on anatomical and physiological knowledge of the time. The focus of the body work was again and again on the self-perception of posture and movement. In order to demonstrate the change in posture, she published nude pictures of herself before, during and after 3 months of training in Körperkultur des Weibes (Munich, 1906) to illustrate what could be done with her training. However, because of her nude pictures, she was not equally enforceable in all states.

She taught her “System Mensendieck” mainly in Europe (Germany, Holland, Norway, Denmark and Austria). In 1910 the first institute for the training of gymnastics teachers was founded. After the First World War, Bess Mensendieck left Europe, now mostly worked in New York and gave annual training courses in Germany and Denmark. She spent the summer months in her Norwegian summer house. She lived in Copenhagen for a few years in the 1950s and eventually moved back to New York.

Bess Mensendieck must have been a petite person with tremendous assertiveness and a room-filling voice. In auditoriums it could be heard clearly in the back row. Mensendieck was one of the few women who combined the ideas and demands of women's rights activists with their “Mensendieck system”. “Think for yourself!” Was the motto of her teaching.

Reception in popular culture

Mensen Diecks system was linked in the 1920s in the public eye so strongly with her person, her name as konjugierbares verb "mensen diecken" (similar to "millers" by the method of Jørgen Peter Müller ) temporarily entered the German language. The cabaret artist Willy Rosen immortalized this word form in 1926 in his chanson Frau Levy mensendiekt , in which he humorously took up this fitness form, and Claire Waldoff sang in 1927 in the couplet O wie practical (is the Berliner) , written by Friedrich Hollaender , (from the Revue You can talk about it ): "whether she dances, whether she types, whether she dangles". Also in 1926 the Low German Schwank Hulda geiht mensendiecken was performed in Hamburg .

Publications by Bess Mensendieck

As early as 1906, Mensendieck was the first woman in Germany to publish a book on physical culture. The book mainly described static exercises and contained pictures of Mensendieck during their exercises, naked and in the pose of Greek statues. Mensendieck can only be attributed to the nudist movement to a limited extent, even if it influenced it and worked with Leni Riefenstahl in 1925 on the film Paths to Strength and Beauty , which is considered the first film about naturism .

  • Body culture of women. Practically hygienic and practical aesthetic hints. Munich 1906, later published under:
  • Body culture of woman. Practically hygienic and practical aesthetic hints. Munich 1920.
  • Female physical education and the art of movement. Munich 1912.
  • Functional women's gymnastics. Munich 1923.
  • My system. In: Ludwig Pallat, Franz Hilker: artistic body training. Wroclaw 1926.
  • Movement problems. Designing beautiful arms. Munich 1927.
  • Grace of movement in daily life. Munich 1929.
  • Look Better, Feel Better. New York 1954.

further reading

  • Karoline von Steinaecker: Jumps in the air - the beginnings of modern body therapies. Munich / Jena 2000.
  • Arnd Krüger , Claudia Meimbresse: Mensendieck, Bess M. In: K. Christensen, A. Guttmann, G. Pfister (Eds.): International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports . Vol. 2. Macmillan Reference, New York 2001, ISBN 0-02-864954-0 , pp. 727-728.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arnd Krüger : There Goes This Art of Manliness: Naturism and Racial Hygiene in Germany. In: Journal of Sport History 18 (Spring, 1991), 1, pp. 135–158 ( online ; PDF; 249 kB. The three nude pictures on p. 147).
  2. ^ Rudolf Köster: Proper names in the German vocabulary: A lexicon. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-11-017701-3 , p. 115 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  3. ↑ Catrin Möderler: The early Fitness Queen , German wave, March 7th 2010, accessed on 2 February 2017th
  4. ↑ Willy Rosen: "Frau Levy mensendiekt" October 1, 1926 on YouTube
  5. ↑ Claire Waldoff lecture artist - O like practical - Friedrich Holländer - 1927 on YouTube
  6. ↑ Maren Mohring: Marble bodies: body formation in the German nudists (1890-1930) . Böhlau, Cologne Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-412-14904-7 , p. 72 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  7. ↑ Ulrike Traub: Theater of Nudity: On the Change in Meaning of Bare Bodies on the Stage since 1900. transcript, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-8394-1610-5 , p. 57 ( limited preview in Google book search).
personal data
SURNAME Mensendieck, Bess
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mensendieck, Bess M .; Mensendieck, Elizabeth Marguerite de Varel (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American doctor and physiotherapist
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1957