Turnen around the World represents an international effort by an assemblage of prominent sport historians to detail and assess the worldwide scope, effects, and residual influences of the German Turnen movement over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A male nationalistic movement based on gymnastics and other physical activities established in response to the Napoleonic wars became even more political in the German Revolution of 1848. Refugees, colonizers, and immigrants spread the political and cultural aspects of Turnen throughout the world thereafter, with varying results that still resonate today. In some cases, Turnen societies resisted assimilation and took an isolationist stance retaining their own culture and language. In others they gradually assimilated, adapting and adopting the norms, standards, and values of the host cultures while establishing educational and physical culture practices that endured. In still other areas a nominal, but peripheral effect influenced local physical practices. Within Germany, the Turners remain the most substantial physical culture association in the country with more than five million members, around 70 percent being females.
"Introduction, Annette R. Hofmann and Gerald Gems Part 1: Germany Chapter 1: Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852) - An Introduction to his Life and Work, Josef Ulkotte Chapter 2: German Turners in the Revolution of 1848-49 and its Aftermath, Michael Krüger Chapter 3: The ""March into the Third Reich"" and the Temporary End of the Free Turner Movement, Michael Krüger Chapter 4: Women in the German Turner Movement: Beginnings, Developments and Changes, Gertrud Pfister and Annette R. Hofmann Part 2: Europe Chapter 5: The Turner Movement in Tyrol (Austria) until 1919, Karl Graf Chapter 6: Karl Völker: The Swiss “Turnfather” and the Founding of the London Turnverein, Michael Krüger Part 3: The Americas: United States, Canada, and Brazil Chapter 7: 175 Years of the American Turners: An Overview, Annette R. Hofmann Chapter 8: Between a Rock and a Hard Place´: German-American Turners and Turnvereins in the Southern Confederacy of Civil War America, 1861-1865, Robert Knight Barney Chapter 9: Turner Ascendency in Rochester, NY through Song, Spirit, and Sport in the late 19th Century, Alec S. Hurley Chapter 10: The German Turners and the Taming of Radicalism in Chicago, Gerald Gems Chapter 11: German-Brazilian Turner Societies in Brazil´s South (1858-1938), Evelise Amgarten Quitzau and Lothar Wieser Chapter 12: German-Canadian Turnvereins: Origin and Evolution 1855-1875, Wendy Gray Part 4: Australia Chapter 13: The Turner Movement in Australia: A Historiographical Assessment, Rob Hess Part 5: Japan Chapter 14: Influences of German Turnen in Japan, Toshi Ichiba Part 6: Afrika Chapter 15: Turnen in the German Colony of Southwest Africa, Annette R. Hofmann Glossary About the Authors"
Annette R. Hofmann is professor of sports studies at the Ludwigsburg University of Education in Germany. Gerald Gems is past president of the North American Society for Sport History.
