Wroclaw gymnastics feud
In the Breslau gymnastics feud in 1819, as a result of the events at the Wartburg Festival in 1817, violent disputes between gymnasts and gymnasts over the gymnastics goal came about , as a result of which the gymnasium in Breslau was closed. It therefore represented the prelude to the gymnastics ban that came into effect only a short time later.
When the rector of the Elisabet-Gymnasium in Breslau , Karl Friedrich Etzler , had spoken out very clearly against gymnastics in public, there was a dispute between him and some of his students and other gymnasts on the gymnastics field. The dispute began to widen very quickly as various professors made this dispute the platform for their political views. These controversial discussions soon escalated into debates where personal insults were the order of the day.
On the one hand, there were the "gymnastics friends" with the Germanists Franz Passow , Christian Wilhelm Harnisch and Hans Ferdinand Maßmann at the head, on the other, the "gymnasts" led by the philosopher Henrich Steffens and the historian Karl Adolf Menzel . In 1818, Passow wrote “Turnziel. Gymnastics friends and gymnasts ”in the sense of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn emphasizes the egalitarian social goals of the early gymnastics movement. He wanted to do away with the still prevailing class contradictions and thus modernize the school system. At the same time, however, the state and society should also change. Steffens, on the other hand, took a stand against the broad political and even cultural revolutionary significance of gymnastics. He valued the services of Jahn and the gymnastics movement to the physical education (a term going back to the French doctor Pierre Brouzet, 1714–1772) of the youth, but everything that was demanded in terms of political ideas, he considered dangerous nonsense.
The Prussian captain Wilhelm von Schmeling stood between the warring camps and saw school gymnastics as a task of the military, which he clearly expressed in his book "Landwehr".
After the murder of the writer August von Kotzebue on March 23, 1819 by the student and gymnast Karl Ludwig Sand in Mannheim , the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. forbid gymnastics in the summer of the same year. The dispute in Breslau confirmed the Prussian king's reservations about gymnastics. On January 2, 1820, Police Minister Karl August von Hardenberg had a corresponding decree (" Turnsperre ") published (quote: "As His Majesty's serious will ... that all gymnastics should absolutely cease").
The participants in the Breslau gymnastics feud were given severe reprimands; Maßmann was expelled to Magdeburg . The king ordered the closure of the gymnasiums in Berlin and Breslau and instructed his ministers to put an end to the spirit of unrest, especially in the universities and gymnasiums.
literature
- The Breslau gymnastics feud: a prelude to the first demagogue persecution, Wilhelm Rudkowski, 1911
- Yearbook of the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau, Volume 33, publication (Göttinger Arbeitskreis), Göttingen Arbeitskreis, Holzner-Verlag, 1993
Individual evidence
- ^ Josef N. Neumann: Pediatrics (modern times). In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , pp. 743-749; here: p. 745 ( physical education ).