do gymnastics

This article deals with the physical activity of gymnastics , for the mountain in Switzerland see Turnen (mountain) .

The gymnastics is a part of the sport . Originally (in Jahn's time) a collective term for all types of physical exercise, including swimming and hiking, the term is now used almost exclusively for gymnastics in both scientific terminology and everyday language . This also includes trampoline gymnastics or gymnastics wheel gymnastics . The gym teacher became a sports teacher, the gym became a sports hall, and the gym shoe became a sports shoe. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) is considered to be the founder of organized gymnastics in Germany . Gymnastics develops conditional skills ( fitness ) and coordination skills (see the history of sport ).

organization

The professional association in Germany is the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB), the second largest professional association after the German Football Association in the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB). The high proportion of women at the DTB is striking. In Switzerland it is the Swiss Gymnastics Federation , which emerged in 1985 as the successor to the Swiss Gymnastics Club after the merger with the women's gymnastics club.

history

Pictures from the foundation festival of the Leipziger Allgemeine Turnverein 1895 (after a drawing by A. Liebing)

The Lübeck Centenary of German Gymnastics in the Main Gym, Address by General von Falk (March 25, 1917)

Physical training played practically no role in (school) education in the 18th century. Fencing and dancing were only taught in the knight academies. The Enlightenment philanthropists then viewed the mind and body as a unit, which is why physical exercises were first introduced in the 1770s at the Philanthropinum in Dessau, and soon afterwards also in Schnepfenthal .

The gymnastics movement was historically founded in Germany in 1807 by the 'gymnastics father' Friedrich Ludwig Jahn . Although there were different forms of gymnastics before, he added numerous other devices to the devices known up until then, such as the parallel bars and the horizontal bar, and used the term gymnastics to describe them. As a result of Napoleon's occupation of Europe, gymnastics became a school of "patriotic education in preparation for the war of liberation " from 1811 . Jahn did not strive, like the philanthropists of the Enlightenment, the education of the individual, but the spiritual formation of a nation. Therefore, in the course of the “awakening of national identities” (nation building), offshoots of the Jahn gymnastics in Switzerland soon formed (in 1802, the Telliring was created as the first public gymnastics place in Switzerland). The close connection with the early fraternity system and the national orientation, which aimed to overcome the small German states , led in most small states of Germany from 1820–1842 to the prohibition of the gymnastics, the so-called gymnastic barrier . The history of gymnastics and the life and work of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn is shown in the Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Museum in Freyburg (Unstrut) . In the second half of the 19th century, gymnastics established itself as a compulsory subject in schools. In Germany, Adolf Spieß expanded the previously common apparatus gymnastics to include calisthenics . Since there was a state "school reform from above" after the founding of the Reich in 1871, club and school races developed further on two different tracks in Germany (see also school sports ). This process was different in Switzerland. Through the successful 1848 revolution, the liberal-national-minded gymnasts went the same way as the state. As a result, the Federal Gymnastics Association was able to actively participate in the discussion about the design of school gymnastics (e.g. in the design of the teaching material). Individual exponents such as the Swiss gymnastics father Johannes Niggeler advanced to direct advisers to the Federal Council.

Due to its different cultural origins, gymnastics was in competition with sport from the start (see the history of sport ). It was only in the course of the "sporting-up" of gymnastics and the nationalization of sport that the differences were reduced after lengthy internal conflicts (at times two national gymnastics newspapers). On the one hand, sporting competitions like the Olympic Games became a “measure of national proficiency”, and on the other hand, the zeitgeist of sport (regulation, specialization, methodization, rationalization) also found its way into gymnastics. This led to a change in the use of the term gymnastics. In the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century it still applied to all exercises practiced in gymnastics clubs, today it is only used for floor and apparatus gymnastics. For the school subject, too, the term school sport or sport has now generally prevailed over the old term school gymnastics. The term artistic gymnastics, which has been in use for decades for performance-oriented gymnastics on the equipment, has now been officially replaced in Germany by equipment gymnastics, sometimes with the addition of Olympic. In Austria the term artistic gymnastics continues to be used for the competitions in the Olympic six-way fight.

Gymnastics in the time of National Socialism

After the takeover of the NSDAP , the Turner tried to be a further column next to the NSDAP, SA and SS to establish and collect the sports movement. They separated from their Jewish and socialist members without necessity, introduced the Aryan paragraph and wanted to take over the office of Reich Sports Leader . Edmund Neuendorff was the driving force at the national level, but at the regional level he was helped by gymnasts like Nikolaus Bernett in Oldenburg. The German Gymnastics Festival in Stuttgart in 1933 should seal the takeover. However, the NSDAP had other plans, followed the Italian models of state sport and incorporated gymnastics as a specialist office (= dependent department) in the new Reichsbund for physical exercises . While the gymnasts at the beginning of the 20th century were ready to part with many members because of the anti-Semitism question, they now wanted to become part of the Nazi movement.

Disciplines of gymnastics

For gymnastics in addition to the classical disciplines include Gymnastics and trampolining in a broader sense also the general gymnastics , rhythmic gymnastics , wheel gymnastics , aerobics , acrobatics , rope skipping and vaulting and various gymnastic games .

The classic apparatus gymnastics (or artistic gymnastics) consists of a six-way fight on the floor , pommel horse , rings , jump , parallel bars and horizontal bar for men . Four devices are used for women: jump , uneven bars , balance beam and floor .

In school, but also in recreational and popular sports, the content, equipment and forms of exercise and organization of so-called "alternative gymnastics" (obstacle gymnastics, adventure and adventure gymnastics, movement landscapes, social gymnastics) are increasingly being used again.

Internationally, general gymnastics and the sports of apparatus gymnastics, trampoline gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, tumbling, sports aerobics and sports acrobatics are represented by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG, International Gymnastics Federation) and the Union Européenne de Gymnastique (UEG, European Gymnastics Union) .

Nude gymnastics was one of the nude sports .

Gymnast salute

The Turner greeting was "Gut Heil!" And was coined around 1840 by Otto Leonhard Heubner . At the Workers' Gymnastics Federation , the greeting changed in 1899 to "Frei Heil".

Related topics

• Many general sports clubs also refer to themselves as gymnastics clubs .
• Academic gymnastics clubs were the forerunners of the gymnastics associations , i.e. special student associations.

literature

• Erhard Hirsch: The Dessau-Wörlitz Reform Movement in the Age of Enlightenment. People - structures - effects. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-484-81018-1 , pp. 324-337.
• J. Leirich, H.-G. Bernstein, I. Gwizdek: Gymnastics on devices. Practical ideas. Volume 29, Hofmann-Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-7780-0291-9 .
• Oliver Ohmann: gymnastics father Jahn and the German gymnastics festivals. Sutton, Erfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-86680-264-3 .
• Stefan Kern: Gymnastics for the fatherland and health. The Swiss Federal Gymnastics Association and its views on school gymnastics, voluntary preliminary lessons and club gymnastics 1900–1930. Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-640-46240-7 .
• Julius Bohus: Sports History. Society and sport from Mycenae to today. Munich 1986.

Web links

Commons : Gymnastics  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• International gymnastics association
• European gymnastics union
• Current news from gymnastics
• German Gymnastics League - national leagues for men and women
• Results service for apparatus gymnastics women
• Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Museum

Individual evidence

1. ^ Julius Bohus: Sports history. 1986, pp. 105-118.
2. ↑ One-two-three. A look back at two centuries of gymnastics and sport in Switzerland. DVD for the 175th anniversary of the Swiss Gymnastics Federation. Aarau 2007.
3. ^ Julius Bohus: Sports history. 1986, pp. 105-118.
4. ↑ Markwart Michler : From the history of movement therapy. In: Würzburg medical history reports. 24, 2005, p. 218.
5. ^ Michael Krüger: Introduction to the history of physical education and sport. Schorndorf 1993; Stefan Kern: Gymnastics for the fatherland and health. Munich 2009, p. 21.
6. ^ Arnd Krüger : Is there any sense in competition, specialization and the striving for records? The struggle between Turnen, sports and Swedish gymnastics in Germany. In: Guy Bonhomme (ed.): La place du jeu dans l'éducation. Histoire et pédagogie. FFEPGV, Paris 1989, pp. 123-140.
7. ^ Lutz Eichenberger: The Federal Sports Commission. Thun 1998, p. 226.
8. ↑ cf. Julius Bohus: Sports History. 1986, p. 127.
9. ^ Arnd Krüger: The influence of the state sport of fascist Italy on Nazi Germany. 1928-1936. In: JA Mangan, R. Small (Ed.): Sport - Culture - Society. Spon, London 1986, pp. 145-165.
10. ↑ Arnd Krüger: "Today is Germany and tomorrow ..."? The struggle for the sense of conformity in sport in the first half of 1933. In: W. Buss, A. Krüger (Hrsg.): Sport history: maintaining tradition and changing values. Festschrift for the 75th birthday of Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Henze . (= Series of publications by the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History. Volume 2). Mecke, Duderstadt 1985, pp. 175-196.
11. ^ Arnd Krüger: How "Goldhagen" was the German System of Physical Education, Turnen and Sport. In: Arnd Krüger, Angela Teja, Else Trangbæk (eds.): European perspectives on the history of sport, culture and politics. Tischler, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-922654-49-5 , pp. 82-92.
12. ↑ Der Turnergruß (PDF; 40 kB) by Harald Braun on dtb online, accessed on February 23, 2011.