Turners

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File:Milwaukee Bundesturnhalle.jpg
Gymnastics room in Turner Hall, Milwaukee, Template:Circa
File:Bundesturnfest Milwaukee 1893.jpg
3,000 Turners performed at the Federal Gymnastics Festival in Milwaukee, 1893.

Turners (Template:Langx, Template:IPA) are members of German-American gymnastic clubs called Turnvereine. They promoted German culture, physical culture, and liberal politics. Turners, especially Francis Lieber, were the leading sponsors of gymnastics as an American sport and the field of academic study.

In Germany, a major gymnastic movement was started by Turnvater ("father of gymnastics") and nationalist Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in the early 19th century when Germany was occupied by Napoleon. The Turnvereine (Template:IPA; "gymnastic unions"; from German turnen meaning "to practice gymnastics" and Verein meaning "club, union") were not only athletic but also political, reflecting their origin in similar ethnocentric "national gymnastic" organizations in Europe (such as the Czech Sokol), who participated in various national movements for independence. The Turner movement in Germany was generally liberal in nature, and many Turners took part in the Revolutions of 1848.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

File:St-louis-german-turner-shooting-club-medium.jpg
Group portrait of the St. Louis, Missouri Turnverein in 1860

After the failure of the 1848 Revolution in Germany, the Turner movement was suppressed, and many Turners left Germany, some for the United States, especially the Ohio Valley region, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Texas. Several of these Forty-Eighters became Union soldiers and some became Republican politicians.<ref>Gruen, Mardee. "Milwaukee Turners, local Jews go back 141 years." Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle April 29, 1994; p. 6, col. 1</ref> Besides serving as physical education, social, political, and cultural organizations for German immigrants, Turners were also active in public education and labor movements.<ref name="Hofmann">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref><ref name="LeCompte">Template:Cite web</ref> They were leading promoters of gymnastics in the U.S. as a sport and a school subject.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In the U.S., the movement declined after 1900, and especially after 1917.<ref>Annette R. Hofmann, "Transformation and Americanization: The American Turners and their new identity." International Journal of the History of Sport 19.1 (2002): 91-118.</ref>

History in the United States

File:American Turners stamp, Scott 979.jpg
Postage stamp commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the American Turners

The Turner movement was preceded by the first wave of gymnastics in the U.S. in the 1820s, led by Germans such as Charles Beck and Charles Follen and Americans such as John Neal. Beck opened the first gymnasium in the U.S. in 1825 at the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Follen opened the first college gymnasium and the first public gymnasium in the States in 1826 at Harvard College and in Boston, Massachusetts, respectively.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Neal was the first American to open a public gymnasium in the U.S., in Portland, Maine, in 1827.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He documented and promoted these early efforts in the American Journal of Education<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and The Yankee, helping to establish the American branch of the movement.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Turnvereine contributed to German-Americans' integration into their new home. They still exist in areas of heavy German immigration, such as Iowa, Texas, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, Missouri, Syracuse, New York, Kentucky, New York City, Sacramento, and Los Angeles.

About 1,000 Turners served as Union soldiers during the Civil War. Anti-slavery was a common element, as typified by Carl Schurz. Many Republican leaders in German communities were members. They provided the bodyguard at Abraham Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, and at his funeral in April 1865. In the Camp Jackson Affair, a large force of German volunteers helped prevent Confederate forces from seizing the government arsenal in St. Louis just before the war began.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> After the war, the national organization took a new name, Nordamerikanischer Turnerbund, and supported German-language teaching in public high schools, as well as gymnastics. Women's auxiliaries formed in the 1850s and 1860s. The high point in membership came in 1894, with 317 societies and about 40,000 adult male members, along with 25,000 children and 3,000 women.<ref>Steven A. Reiss, ed., Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century: An Encyclopedia (2011) pp 913-916.</ref>

In the 1904 Olympics, several competitors represented Turners organizations in Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and some Olympic teams were sponsored by Turners.

Like other German-American groups, the Turners experienced suspicion during World War I, even though they no longer had much contact with Germany. German-language instruction ended at many schools and universities, and the federal government imposed restrictions on German-language publications. The younger generation generally demanded the switch to exclusive use of English society affairs, which allowed many Turner societies to continue to function.<ref name="Hofmann" />

Cultural assimilation and both World Wars with Germany took a gradual toll on membership, with some halls closing and others becoming regular dance halls, bars, or bowling alleys.<ref name="LeCompte" /> As of 2011, 54 Turner societies remained in the U.S. The American Turners' headquarters is in Louisville, Kentucky.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1948, the US Post Office issued a 3-cent commemorative stamp to mark the 100th anniversary of the movement in the country.

The Turnverein in Sacramento, founded in 1854, claims to be the oldest institution in the city still in existence.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Turnverein Vorwaerts of Fort Wayne, Indiana, owned the Hugh McCulloch House from 1906 to 1966.<ref name="SHAARD">Template:Cite web Note: This includes Template:Cite web and Accompanying photographs.</ref>Template:Rp It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.<ref name="nris">Template:NRISref</ref>

Vintage photos of the Milwaukee Turnverein

Other Wisconsin Turners in 1915

Monuments in the United States

Jahn Monument in Berlin with memorial plaques from American Turnvereine

Turner Halls

See also

References

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Further reading

  • Barney, Robert Knight. "German Turners in America: Their Role in Nineteenth Century Exercise Expression and Physical Education Legislation." in Earle F. Zeigler ed., American Sport and Physical Education History (to 1875) (1975): 116+. online
  • Barney, Robert Knight. "Knights of Cause and Exercise: German Forty-Eighters and Turnvereine in the United States during the Antebellum Period." Canadian Journal of History of Sport 13.2 (1982): 62-79.
  • Barney, Robert Knight. "America's First Turnverein: Commentary in Favor of Louisville, Kentucky." Journal of Sport History 11.1 (1984): 134-137. online
  • Hoyt, D. J. (1999). A strong mind in a strong body: Libraries in the German-American Turner movement. New York, NY: Peter Land.
  • Kramer, William M., and Norton B. Stern. "The Turnverein: A German Experience for Western Jewry." Western States Jewish History 16 (1984): 227.
  • Metzner, Henry. A brief history of the American Turnerbund (1924) online
  • Pfister, Gertrud. "The Role of German Turners in American Physical Education," International Journal of the History of Sport 26 (no. 13, 2009) 1893-925
  • Pumroy, Eric, and Katja Rampelmann. Research guide to the Turner movement in the United States (Greenwood, 1996).


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