Friedrich Ludwig Jahn

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778 - 1852) was a German Prussian gymnastics educator and patriot.

Jahn studied at the University of Greifswald. After taking his degree, he founded the turnverein movement in 1811 and invented parallel bars, balance beam, gymnastics rings, vaulting horse and the borizontal bar. He is often described as the "father of gymnastics".

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn was born August 11, 1778, in the small village of Lanz, in the province of Brandenburg, Prussia. His mother gave him his first lessons in reading and writing, and his father, the minister of the village, instructed him in the elementary branches of education. The boy was thus enabled to lead a free, untrammeled life, and to disport himself in the practice of various bodily exercises, which enabled him to attain a certain mastery in this field at a very early age.

At the age of thirteen he was sent to the Gymnasium at Salzwedel, and in 1794 he moved to Berlin, where he continued his studies in the Gymnasium zum graven Kloster. It is significant to note that it was difficult for a boy of his temperament to submit to the strict discipline of either school. Several years later, after secretly leaving Berlin, he went to Halle in order to study theology, although he felt no urgent call in this direction.

As a student Jahn pursued an unfettered life. The universal temptation to go roaming out into the world, happily termed Wanderlust, manifesting itself to an acute degree in his veins, he wandered about Germany with an observing eye, taking note of the country and its people, of their customs and manners, and of the various folk dialects and peculiarities. All this fostered a patriotic idealism in him, which found expression in various pamphlets he issued at this period.

When the war between Prussia and France was renewed in 1806, Jahn hastened to join the army, but before he could realize his purpose, his Prussian compatriots had suffered a decisive defeat at the battle of Jena. This unhappy event had a crushing effect on the spirit of Jahn, whose hair turned gray over night in mental anguish over the terrible calamity. However, his optimism and faith in the ultimate success of Prussian valor reasserted themselves in this hour of gloom, for he wrote with confidence of the time when all his hopes for a new, free and unified Germany would be realized.

In 1810 we find him teaching at the school, which he himself had attended in his youth, the Gymnasium zum graven Kloster, and later, in the same year, at the Plamann Institute. His most important book, "Deutsches Volkstum" (German Nationalism), appeared at this time, and his plea for the unity of Germany was universally commented upon and heartily applauded. Furthermore, this year marks the beginning of his first practical attempts to introduce gymnastic exercises among his students, to infuse them with a patriotic love for freedom, to make them capable of bearing arms for their oppressed country, and to prepare them for the imminent war of liberation.

As noted above, the first public Turnplatz was opened by Jahn in the spring of the year 1811. The boys and young men of Berlin, five hundred strong, responded to his call and followed him to the Hasenheide, where they indulged in gymnastic exercises under his direction. In spite of the freedom which he accorded to his scholars, Jahn was a stern disciplinarian in many respects, and compelled them to maintain good order and observe good manners.

On November 14 of that year, Jahn, Friesen, and other men of like sympathies founded the Deutsche Bund, an organization with the purpose of ending the domination of their country by an alien power. The personnel of its membership was to be drawn from the German universities. This Bund inspired the founding of the Deutsche Burschenschaft, an association of students banded together for patriotic motives, which played such a prominent part in the political crises of later years.

Jahn and his Turners were among the first to respond to the call to arms issued by King Frederick William III of Prussia, on March 17, 1813, and in the campaign, which followed, they demonstrated their military fitness as members of the Landwehr, a volunteer military organization which they helped to establish. Owing to sickness, Jahn was forced to withdraw from this body before the close of the campaign, but as a reward for his services the government bestowed upon him an honorary salary of 500 Taler, which was later increased to 800 Taler.

In August of the year 1814 he was married to Helene Kollhof. Although he did not take part in the war against France in 1815, he was called to Paris upon the recapture of that city by the allied forces. In the following year his second book, "Deutche Turnkunst" (German Gymnastics) appeared in print. In the winter following the publication of this book Jahn took to the public platform, where he gave courageous expression to the dissatisfaction that was felt on all sides because the government did not redeem the promise of a constitution given to the people before the successful campaign against Napoleon.

Jahn's uncompromising attitude on this point, although it won him many admirers among the people, did not gain him the good will of the government. This, together with the demonstrations of the Burschenschaften, which were attributed to his influence, ultimately led to the closing of his Turnplatz, a procedure to which similar organizations were subjected all over Germany.

In 1819 the playwright and journalist Kotzebue met his death at the hand of Karl Sand, a student fanatic and member of the Jena Burschenschaft. As Kotzebue was in the pay of the Russian Czar, and bitterly opposed to the student organizations, his death was regarded as the result of an organized conspiracy among these societies. Therefore Jahn and his Turners were suspected of being accomplices in the assassination. Among the prohibitory regulations issued by the government as the result of this assassination was one which limited "Turnen" in such a way as almost to eliminate it entirely.

In July of the year 1819 Jahn was placed under arrest on a charge of high treason, and the trial was delayed for five years until January 13, 1824, when he was sentenced to two years' confinement in a fortress because of disrespectful and derogatory remarks which he supposedly had made in alluding to the administration of the state. Jahn immediately published his defense in pamphlet form, upon which his sentence was revoked, and he was given his liberty. In the years which followed, until 1840, when Frederick William IV ascended the Prussian throne, Jahn was under the continuous suspicion of political demagogy, and though he led a quiet, retired life, devoting himself to literary labors in his field, he was forced to seek out many new residences because of the relentless espionage and persecution to which he was subjected.

In August of the year 1838 his house was destroyed by fire and his rich library as well as his numerous manuscripts were consumed bv the flames. The Turners of Germany instituted a popular subscription, which enabled him to erect a new home upon his property. With the inauguration of the new king, Jahn was freed entirely of the strict surveillance on the part of the police, and subsequently the Iron Cross was bestowed upon him, a delayed recognition of his valorous conduct in battle. The prohibition of "Turnen" was removed in 1842, and immediately numerous gymnastic societies were organized in various parts of Germany, whose members found a mutual bond in their patriotic sentiments.

When the dissatisfaction caused by its misrule and the utter indifference of the government to the popular demand for a constitution, which had been often promised, infused the people with the spirit of the French Revolution and culminated in the revolutionary outbreaks of the year 1848, Jahn was again thrust into public life as an elected representative to the National German Parliament at Frankfurt on the Main. But Jahn, the leader of the year 1811, was not emancipated to the level of this new aggressive spirit, and failed to justify the faith that was placed in him by his adherents. The ambitions of the revolutionists were beyond his vision, and his period of enlightened leadership had become a record of the past. And so, at the second Turner convention in Hanau, in July of 1848, he found himself estranged from his own Turners, who did not sympathize with his attitude in the Parliament. So Jahn, embittered and misunderstood, withdrew himself to Freiburg, where he died October 15, 1852.

The Jahn of the year '48 has been forgotten; his memory has been replaced by the glory of Turnvater Jahn, the glowing patriot who revived the art of German gymnastics, and was influential as was no other single man in enkindling the youth of his country for the war of liberation. As such, and as the author of "Deutsches Volkstum," "Deutsche Turnkunst," and various other inspiring articles and pamphlets aiming at the cultivation of a healthy body and inaugurating the principle of German unity, he is honored today.

His greatest contribution to society, no doubt, is his service in the field of physical training, which has found so many exponents and followers and has spread its influence over all lands. The centennial anniversary of the first Turnplatz, in 1911, rendered due tribute to the memory of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn as pioneer in the field of physical training and accorded him recognition for his service to humanity.

History of the American Turners By Henry Metzner