(2) Care of the body

With all his idealism the German takes good care of his physical welfare, is fond of food and drink, and, wherever he has gone, has supplied himself abundantly with both. The Pennsylvania-German farmer may be taken as an illustration. The woman of his choice, says Rush, was domestic, and skillful in preparing for the table what the farm provided. Later immigrations brought German physicians and druggists in great numbers, who looked to the health not only of their own people, but raised the standard of medical practice throughout the country. Outdoor sports came with periods when the leisure class had grown in numbers, and they were mostly brought from England. Indoor gymnastics, however, were introduced by Germans.

In Germany gymnastic exercises (Turnerei) were introduced in the first quarter of the nineteenth century by the patriot Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. His ideal was to recreate in Prussia the gigantic statures of the ancient Germans, as Tacitus had described them. In body and in mind he wished to see men vigorous and independent.

"Frisch, fröhlich und frei,

Die mutigen Söhne der Turnerei,"

expressed the spirit which the young men upheld whom Turnvater Jahn gathered about him. The movement which the founder had started in 1811 in the Hasenheide, near Berlin, and which spread rapidly over all of Germany, came to a sudden end in 1819, when the reactionary governments in Germany greatly feared the political bearing of the Turner foundation. In consequence, the popular Jahn, the great advocate of freedom and healthful growth, was accused of demagoguery and thrown into

1 A quotation from Follen's Das grosse Lied.

prison. On being released he was checkmated for the future by being kept under espionage.1

3

But there were disciples of Jahn to spread his principles abroad, three of whom, exiles from their Fatherland, Carl Beck, Carl Follen, and Francis Lieber, were destined to play important rôles in the land of liberty beyond the seas. Beck and Follen arrived together on Christmas Day in 1824. Beck was appointed teacher of Latin at the Round Hill School,' in Northampton, Massachusetts, and under his direction there was erected at once the Round Hill Gymnasium, after the model of the school established by Turnvater Jahn. Beck's translation into English of Jahn's "Deutsche Turnkunst" for American students aided the cause. Carl Follen, after teaching in the Round Hill School a short time, was called to Harvard College, and there, supported by an appeal of the medical professors of Harvard, he also, in May of 1826, organized a gymnasium after the model of Jahn. Francis Lieber, who arrived in 1827, likewise began his career in America as a disciple of Jahn. His famous swimming-school in Boston has been mentioned in another chapter. Dr. J. C. Warren, professor in the Harvard Medical School and founder, in 1825, of the Tremont Gymnasium in Boston, had made a strong effort to secure Jahn as director of the new institution. Sufficient funds were not available,

4

1 Jahn did not regain unrestricted freedom until the accession of Frederick William IV (1840). In 1842 the Turnerei was revived by a cabinet order of the King of Prussia, and Massmann was called from Munich as the director of Prussian gymnastics at Berlin.

2 Founded in 1823 by George Bancroft and J. G. Cogswell. See ante, Chapter v.

3 Cf. M. D. Learned, The German American Turner Lyric, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Annual Reports of the Society for the History of the Germans in Maryland, 1894-1896, pp. 88 ff.

however, and the call as director of the Tremont Gymnasium went to Dr. Lieber, "a gentleman of education and in other respects well suited to take the superintendence of a public gymnasium." Thus the beginnings of gymnastic work in America were made by Germans.

Though the Jahn system of physical exercises had accomplished the pioneer work of establishing gymnastics as a part of a liberal education, it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that German Turnerei began to exert an important social influence among the middle classes. As in music and journalism, so in the matter of physical training, the refugees of 1848 succeeded in impressing their stamp. Some of their born leaders, who had played prominent rôles in the revolution in Baden, became central figures in the formation of Turner organizations. Such was Hecker,' who became actively engaged in the formation of a Turnverein in Cincinnati. Though many Turners had lived in that part of the country before, they had never organized. On New Year's Day, 1850, the first Turner hall of America was dedicated, in the city of Cincinnati. In the mean time organization had been going on in other places, principally in Eastern cities. On October 5, 1850, delegates of the Turnvereine of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston met in Philadelphia to found a union of gymnastic societies. After the plan was carried into effect (Die Vereinigten Turnvereine Nordamerikas), Cincinnati joined the association. There were also certain political ideas of a social-democratic nature, which the union pledged itself to represent, and a newspaper ("Turnerzeitung") was established as the represent

1 Friedrich Carl Franz Hecker (1811-1881) and Gustav von Struve were the leaders of the insurrection in Baden, in 1848. Hecker came to America in 1849; Struve followed two years later, and also became an active Turner. Both were subsequently officers in the Civil War.

ative organ. The principal functions of the association, however, were the social and gymnastic; the main fact about their politics was that they joined the Free-Soil party and united in opposition against nativism and Know-nothingism.

The growth of the Turnerbund was very rapid. In 1853 it embraced sixty societies; the territory in which they were located was divided into five districts, New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans. An annual gymnastic festival was one of the features of the organization, the place of meeting changing from year to year. In 1859, there were seventy-one societies in the West, with forty-five hundred members; twenty societies in the East, with eighteen hundred members; and sixtyone other independent Turnvereine, not belonging to the Turnerbund, including three thousand members.1 After the Civil War there was a reunion of all Turnvereine of

1 In 1860 the Eastern and Western Turnvereine, which before had separated, united again, and excluded the Southern societies. Political differences in previous years had been brought into the annual meetings of the society, and while in the first years they had come to agreement on resolutions against Know-nothingism and prohibition agitation, the question of slavery caused a breach between North and South, the Northern associations remaining radical in their position against slavery, the Southern, though not unanimous in favor of slavery, adhering to the position taken by their states. The Turners of the North far outnumbered those of the South. They enlisted in the war at once. The Twentieth New York Regiment (Turner Rifles), for instance, consisted only of Germans and numbered twelve hundred men, who left New York, June 13, 1861, under Colonel Max Weber. The work of the Turner Society in St. Louis in their rescue of the St. Louis Arsenal has been mentioned, in Volume I, Chapter XVI. The Cincinnati Turners constituted a large part of the Ninth Ohio Regiment. Thirty-one hundred and forty-eight members of the Turnerbund, or fifty per cent of the total membership, are unmistakably recorded as having taken part in the war against secession. Many others were not put on record. Cf. Schem, Deutsch-Amerikanisches Conversations-Lexicon, vol. xi, p. 47. Another interesting example of the influence of the Turnerbund was its aid in the foundation of New Ulm, Minnesota. Cf. Volume 1, Chapter XV.

the East and West, including most of the independent organizations. New York was again chosen as the centre and a Turnzeitung was established. A new feature, which was designed to advance the cultivation of gymnastics, was the foundation of a seminary for the training of teachers of the art. The Turnlehrerseminar was also located in New York City, though at the present time the centre of the whole movement is located in the West, Milwaukee being the seat of a flourishing school. In 1872 the Turnerbund had over twelve thousand members, with over fifty-six hundred active gymnasts. One hundred and thirty-two societies had schools of gymnastics for boys, and eighteen societies had schools for girls. The property in their halls and libraries amounted to nearly one million dollars, and their purposes were social, educational, and charitable. One of the early successes of the Turners was the introduction of gymnastics at the Naval Academy and in the public schools at Cleveland (in the seventies). Trained teachers of the Lehrerseminare were much in demand in the public and private schools of the country, as soon as the public began to recognize the hygienic value of gymnastic exercises.

Intimately associated with the Turnvereine were the various military societies and fire-engine companies that were organized by the Germans in part to fulfill a patriotic or civic duty, in part to effect political and social coöperation. In Cincinnati, for instance, there were a number of military companies, the Jackson Guards, commanded by General August Moor; the Lafayette Guards, under Captain H. Roedter; several militia companies of sharpshooters and one of Jägers. The latter, under Captain Heckel, was a small company of young men with fine physiques and flashing uniforms. The native population at that time resented the coming-in of foreigners, and their animosity