German university for physical exercises

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Sports forum of the German University for Physical Education in Berlin-Charlottenburg, August 1931

The German University for Physical Exercise (DHfL) was a free, scientific research facility with the main goal of training as many competent sports teachers as possible. It existed from 1920 to 1935.

founding

Sports students at the German University for Physical Exercise

On May 15, 1920, the German University for Physical Education was founded in what was then Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität (today: Humboldt-Universität ) , the establishment of which was suggested in a memorandum submitted by Carl Diem in 1919. However, Diem was not familiar with the educational landscape and underestimated the claim of the states of the Reich to the educational monopoly. This was realized by Theodor Lewald , who, as the person responsible for the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in the Reich, knew about the educational monopoly of the German states and therefore initially founded a research facility for which the Reich was responsible. The university was initially temporarily housed in the German Stadium , the predecessor of the Berlin Olympic Stadium built in 1913 . As early as the summer of 1921, temporary buildings could be occupied on the site adjacent to the German Stadium to the north. In the German Sports Forum , which has been built since 1925 , permanent rooms were then created for the university.

Carl Diem wrote about the motivation for founding the university: "It should be a free scientific research facility for all the varied effects and problems of physical exercise and renew the teaching of physical exercise in close cooperation between science and practice."

“According to Diem's ​​memorandum, the university should primarily serve to train teachers. For this purpose, it took in young people, men and women, who had passed the final examination of a nine-level higher educational institution. No of Diem's ​​work has been more severely attacked than that of teacher training by the university. "

Furthermore, all laws relating to the theory, practice and history of physical education were researched and short-term courses of 1–4 weeks were set up for introductory or advanced training in physical education. Theodor Lewald , President of the German Reich Committee for Physical Exercise, was responsible for the actual establishment . Since Lewald was responsible for the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in his previous position in the Reich Ministry of the Interior (which became the Max Planck Society ), the university was organized like this. Since the Reich was responsible for research funding and top-class sport , these could be financially supported, but not teacher training.

A special aspect of this university was that the Abitur was not a minimum requirement under certain circumstances. “Not that you have graduated from high school once, but that everyone could achieve the highest in his or her subject with scientific freedom,” Carl Diem was important when the company was founded. For this reason, but also for the following reason, it was brought into being as a private university: “If the state had been founded, the state would in any case have been bound by the educational requirements of the wage levels of its civil servant classes. For example, at the Prussian universities, gymnastics teacher positions [...] could not be filled other than by the course councilors and the director's posts could not be filled by any other than the director of studies [...]. ”The DHfL, however, was dependent on the professional quality of the lecturers and so the students of special subject teachers of the respective sports. Well-known personalities in sports and sports medicine worked in the Senate and the Board of Trustees and taught full, part-time or honorary or as a lecturer at the university.

Head of the university

The first rector of the university was the surgeon August Bier . Carl Diem became Vice Rector. In 1932, after Bier had resigned from this office, Ferdinand Sauerbruch , a world-famous surgeon , was rector . At the pressure of the "Reichssportführer" Hans von Tschammer und Osten , Diem resigned at the beginning of May 1933.

Problems of the university

Exercises on the gym wheel , June 1931

Despite all the progressiveness - the problem with the DHfL was the lack of state recognition. Edmund Neuendorff writes:

“The federal states, Prussia first, had their own state schools for gymnastics teachers, which were sufficient for the needs of their schools. The teacher training at the Diem University became completely irrelevant and superfluous after Prussia decided in 1930 to forego the technical gymnastics teacher forever and to transfer the gymnastics teacher training, which was combined with the scientific, to the universities "

For this purpose, a long-awaited study group for the study of physical exercises was established.

Composed of the DHfL, the PHfL and the University Institute for Physical Education, later the Institute for Physical Education of the TH Charlottenburg , it finally received state recognition in 1931, but was dissolved again on June 6, 1932. In 1935 the DHfL closed for good.

In the winter semester of 1932/33, the students of the DHfL carried out a survey published in the student magazine about the direction in which sport would develop in the event of a National Socialist government. Of the various personalities interviewed, the closest to Carl Krümmel , who predicted a development according to the fascist model of Italy. The conversion of the DHfL into the non-academic Reichsakademie für physical exercises also followed in Italy, since physical exercises, as before in the Weimar period , were mainly practiced as a technical subject.

In the Third Reich

Students of the German University for Physical Education in front of the Institute for Sexology in Berlin before the looting on May 6, 1933

On May 6, 1933, around 100 students from the university plundered the Institute for Sexology , founded by Magnus Hirschfeld , whose library was burned on May 10 in the book burning on Berlin's Opernplatz . Students of the university took part in the introductory torchlight procession with their own formation and carried a bust of Hirschfeld captured during the looting "like a trophy (...) planted on a stick" with them, which was then carried out with "a choreographically rehearsed approach" into the Fire thrown.

Education

The course was initially intended to last four semesters. From 1922 onwards it was extended to six and later to eight semesters. It concluded with a diploma examination. The university was opened in 1920 with 25 students. Their number rose rapidly. In the years from 1925 to 1930 the annual number of visitors averaged around 350, but then fell considerably. The diploma examination passed in the first decade of the university's existence 221, of which 174 were men and 47 were women.

Curriculum

Unveiling of the Jahn memorial, July 1929

As an insight into the content of the course, the curriculum for the 6-semester course follows:

The subjects of study are:

I. Exercise:

  1. Free (preparatory) exercises
  2. athletics
  3. Apparatus gymnastics
  4. swim
  5. Games
  6. Winter sports
  7. rowing
  8. Boxing
  9. Wrestling
  10. fencing
  11. Teaching samples

Exercises 1 to 10 are to be maintained in the first four semesters, in such a way that the first two semesters emphasize the basic exercises (1 to 6), the third and fourth semesters add exercises 6 to 10 and the selected specialty more strongly considered. In addition to repetitions in the practical exercises, the fifth and sixth semesters mainly serve as an introduction to the methodology, which is then applied in practice in the teaching samples.

II. Health science:

  1. Anatomy (I and II)
  2. General Physiology (I and II)
  3. Biology and Constitutional Science
  4. hygiene
  5. Somatology (body theory)
  6. massage
  7. Physical therapy (light, air, water)
  8. Movement theory
  9. Pathology and first aid (sports diseases)
  10. Physical exercise physiology
  11. Orthopedics

Lectures 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 form the basis of health studies and should therefore be heard in the first two semesters if possible. Lectures 4, 5, 8, 10 can be attended in the third and fourth semester, while orthopedics and pathology can be used in the fifth semester; the sixth semester must be kept as free as possible for summarizing, deepening and repeating all lectures.

III. Education:

  1. General Psychology
  2. General pedagogy
  3. Basic concepts of philosophy
  4. Adolescent Psychology
  5. Psycholog. Proficiency tests
  6. Experimental Education
  7. Theory and practice of the training
  8. Upbringing the child
  9. Methodology and system
  10. Social pedagogy and cultural policy

Lectures 1 to 4 should be heard in the first two semesters, nos. 3 to 7 in the third and fourth semesters and nos. 8, 9 and 10 in the fifth and sixth semesters. In addition to repeating the curriculum, the sixth semester is primarily used to visit educational institutions and schools.

IV. Administration:

  1. Club administration
  2. Association administration
  3. history
  4. Device knowledge
  5. Political science
  6. Playground construction
  7. Sports journalism
  8. literature
  9. Foreign gymnastics
  10. Library system

Lectures 1 to 6 are best distributed over the first three semesters, and those from 7 to 10 over the fourth and fifth semesters. You can also take part in the seminars from the third semester onwards.

Personalities

Faculty

Alumni

Web links

Commons : German University for Physical Education  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Siegrief Römer: Term paper for the state examination at the German University for Physical Culture Leipzig. Historical sketch for the training of gym teachers in Prussia in the period from 1918–1928 . Leipzig 1967.
  • W. Hollmann, K. Tittel: History of the German sports medicine . Druckhaus Gera, Gera 2008, ISBN 978-3-9811758-2-0 .
  • Jürgen Court: German sports science in the Weimar Republic and under National Socialism. Volume 2: The history of the German University for Physical Education. 1919-1925. Lit, Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-12558-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Arnd Krüger , Rolf Pfeiffer: Theodor Lewald and the instrumentalization of physical exercise and sport. In: Uwe Wick, Andreas Höfer (ed.): Willibald Gebhardt and his successors. (= Series of publications by the Willibald Gebhardt Institute, vol. 14). Meyer & Meyer, Aachen 2012, ISBN 978-3-89899-723-2 , pp. 120-145.
  2. ^ Carl Diem: The German University for Physical Exercise. Hanover 1924, p. 6.
  3. ↑ Edmund Neuendorff: History of the more recent German physical exercise from the beginning of the 18th century to the present. Volume IV, Dresden 1932, p. 597.
  4. ^ A b Carl Diem: The German University for Physical Exercise. Hanover 1924, p. 9.
  5. ^ Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Hans Rudolf Berndorff : That was my life. Kindler & Schiermeyer, Bad Wörishofen 1951; Licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1956, p. 395.
  6. ↑ a b c Lorenz Peiffer: Students of the German University for Physical Education as participants in the 'Action against the un-German spirit' in the spring of 1933 in the “2008 Yearbook of the German Society for the History of Sports Science”: p. 50 ff.
  7. ↑ Edmund Neuendorff: History of the more recent German physical exercise from the beginning of the 18th century to the present. Volume IV, Dresden 1932, p. 597.
  8. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Today Germany belongs to us and tomorrow ...? The struggle for the sense of conformity in sport in the first half of 1933. In: Wolfgang Buss, Arnd Krüger (Hrsg.): Sport history: maintaining tradition and changing values. Festschrift for the 75th birthday of Prof. Dr. W. Henze. (= Series of publications by the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History, Vol. 2). Mecke, Duderstadt 1985, pp. 175-196.
  9. ^ Arnd Krüger: Gymnastics and gymnastics lessons at the time of the Weimar Republic. Basis of today's misery in school sports? In: Arnd Krüger, Dieter Niedlich (ed.): Causes of the misery of school sports in Germany. Arena Publ., London 1979, ISBN 0-902175-37-8 , pp. 13-31.
  10. ↑ Edmund Neuendorff: History of the more recent German physical exercise from the beginning of the 18th century to the present. Volume IV, Dresden 1932, p. 597.
  11. ^ Carl Diem: The German University for Physical Exercise. Hanover 1924, p. 68.
  12. ↑ a b c d e Jürgen Court: On personnel policy at the German University of Physical Education in “Yearbook 2012 of the German Society for the History of Sports Sciences”: p. 85
  13. ^ Max Planck Institute for the History of Science : Database of international networks of women academics
  14. ↑ Marianne Brentzel: "The Power Woman: Hilde Bejamin 1902-1989"