Johann Adolf Ludwig Werner

Johann Adolf Ludwig Werner (born February 11, 1794 in Vielau ; † January 17, 1866 in Dessau ) was the first to introduce girls' gymnastics in Germany (Dresden) in 1830. Even during the gymnastics ban , he managed to do gymnastics systematically in Germany, as he defined it as gymnastics not in a revolutionary way, but in terms of health and pedagogy. In 1839 he founded the first sports teacher training facility in Germany.

Life

After attending the Lyceum in Zwickau, he studied theology in Leipzig . However, he broke off his studies after the Battle of the Nations and joined the Saxon army as a volunteer. In occupied northern France he learned French fencing, swimming, archery and various movement games. In 1817 he was appointed maitre dans l'art d'escrime as a foreigner, which led to his fencing lessons as a fencing master of his regiment and later as a lieutenant in the Saxon Army. In 1820 he became the university fencing teacher at the University of Leipzig . Here he also heard anatomy and physiology and also taught military gymnastics at Leipzig schools. The term therapeutic gymnastics goes back to Werner. For financial reasons, he moved to Kamenz as postmaster in 1826 before opening a private school as a gymnastics teacher in Dresden in 1830 . Here he began with girls' gymnastics, for which he also published a very practice-rich textbook. In recognition of his services, the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Jena awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1837. Gustav Berndt succeeded him as the university fencing master in Leipzig in 1826. On April 1, 1839, Werner ended his freelance work, which he could no longer afford as the father of 12 children (married to Auguste v. Carlowitz). In Dessau he was responsible for all kinds of physical exercises in the Anhalt-Dessau civil service. Here he laid out a large gymnastics field in 1839 and opened a gymnastics academy for boys and girls in 1840. In 1839 he founded the first sports teacher training facility in Germany, namely the Herzoglich Anhalt-Dessauische Normalschule for the training of gymnastic teachers in Dessau . Here he worked until his retirement in 1863 and received the rank (and payment) of a professor.

Werner is influenced by the French discussion about orthopedic gymnastics for girls and is closer to Pehr Henrik Ling than Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in his health and military exercise . Due to his close connection with the army as a lieutenant, the different terminology (gymnastics instead of gymnastics) and the proximity to the Princely House, whose children and grandchildren he trained in physical exercises, he was not affected by the gymnastics ban, like Bernhard Christoph Faust in Bückeburg . Jahn said derogatory about him: "The cuff gymnast, the naked dough gymnast Werner will train his nonsense for college in Dessau." This position has been taken over by many later gymnastics historians. Only recently has he been recognized as an early representative of girls' gymnastics.

Works

• Attempt of a theoretical instruction on the art of fencing in blows. Hartmann, Leipzig 1824.
• Gymnastics for the female youth or female physical formation for health, strength and grace. Goedsche, Meißen 1834.
• The whole of gymnastics or detailed textbooks of physical education according to the principles of better education for public and special instruction. Goedsche, Meißen 1834.
• The purest source of youthful joys or 300 games to train the mind, strengthen the body and socialize outdoors and indoors. Arnold, Dresden 1835.
• Amöna or the safest means to train and strengthen the female body for its natural purpose. Arnold, Leipzig 1837.
• Medicinal gymnastics, or the art of returning defaced parts of the human body that deviate from their natural form and position, according to anatomical and physiological principles, in the original directions and strengthening them in them. Arnold, Leipzig 1838.
• The ducal gymnastic-orthopedic sanatorium in Dessau and my forty years of work in the field of orthopedics , Dessau: H. Heybruch'sche Hofbuchdruckerei, 1859.

literature

• Gustav Rasmus: Dr. Adolf Werner in his work in the field of gymnastics. Depicted from handwritten certificates and other originals , Dessau 1848
• Bernd Ulbrich: Adolf Werner. Teacher . In: Mitteldeutsches Jahrbuch , 23, 2016, pp. 137–138.

Web links

• Adolf Werner and the gymnastic academy in Dessau
• Portrait of Johann Adolf Ludwig Werner

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kl. Clemenz Wildt: Data on the history of sports . Part II: Europe from 1750 to 1894. Hofmann, Schorndorf 1972, p. 93.
2. ↑ Michael Thomas: Gymnastics for many areas of life. In: Dessau calendar. 55 (2011), ISSN  0420-1264 , pp. 104-127.
3. ↑ Mario Todte: Fecht-, Reit- und Tanzmeister at the University of Leipzig (Studies on Culture and History Vol. 1, edited by Lars-Arne Dannenberg and Matthias Donath ), Bernstadt ad Eigen 2016, pp. 39–43. ISBN 978-3-944104-12-6
4. ↑ Julia Helene Schöler, About the beginnings of Swedish therapeutic gymnastics in Germany. A contribution to the history of therapeutic gymnastics in the 19th century, Diss. Münster 2005, p. 24 f.
5. ↑ Arnd Krüger , Reinhild Fuhrmann: Dr. Bureaud-Riofrey and the Notion of Physical Education for Girls and Women in the Eighteenth and First Half of the Nineteenth Century. In: E. Trangbaek, A. Krüger (Ed.): Gender and Sport from European Perspectives. University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen 1999, ISBN 87-89361-67-9 , pp. 29-42.
6. ↑ Arnd Krüger : History of movement therapy. In: Preventive Medicine. Springer Loseblatt Collection, Heidelberg 1999, 07.06, pp. 1–22.
7. ↑ Reinhild Fuhrmann: The sex res non naturales. On the role of an ancient pattern of justification for physical exercise in the educational and medical discourse of the 18th century with special consideration of the "Lower Saxony gymnastics father" Dr. Bernhard Christoph Faust. 2004, ISBN 3-932423-17-8 .
8. ↑ FL Jahn: Letters. Limpert, Dresden 1930, p. 441.