Friedrich Ludwig Jahn
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Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (August 11, 1778 – October 15, 1852) was a German Prussian gymnastics educator and nationalist. He is commonly known as Turnvater Jahn, roughly meaning "father of gymnastics".
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[edit] Life
Jahn was born in Lanz in Brandenburg. He studied theology and philology from 1796 to 1802 at Halle, Göttingen at the University of Greifswald. After the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 he joined the Prussian army. In 1809 he went to Berlin, where he became a teacher at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster and at the Plamann School.
Brooding upon what he saw as the humiliation of his native land by Napoleon, Jahn conceived the idea of restoring the spirits of his countrymen by the development of their physical and moral powers through the practice of gymnastics. The first Turnplatz, or open-air gymnasium, was opened by Jahn in Berlin in 1811, and the Turnverein (gymnastics association) movement spread rapidly. Young gymnasts were taught to regard themselves as members of a kind of guild for the emancipation of their fatherland. This nationalistic spirit was nourished in no small degree by the writings of Jahn.
Early in 1813 Jahn took an active part in the formation of the famous Lützow Free Corps, a volunteer force in the Prussian army fighting Napoleon. He commanded a battalion of the corps, though he was often employed in the secret service during the same period. After the war he returned to Berlin where he was appointed state teacher of gymnastics, and took on a role in the formation of the student patriotic fraternities, or Burschenschaften, in Jena.
A man of populistic nature, rugged, eccentric and outspoken, Jahn often came into collision with the authorities, and this conflict resulted in the closing of the Turnplatz in 1819 and Jahn's arrest. Kept in semi-confinement at the fortress of Kolberg until 1824, he was sentenced to imprisonment for two years. The sentence was reversed in 1825, but he was forbidden to live within ten miles of Berlin. He therefore took up residence at Freyburg on the Unstrut, where he remained until his death, with the exception of a short period in 1828, when he was exiled to Kölleda on a charge of sedition.
In 1840 Jahn was decorated by the Prussian government with the Iron Cross for bravery in the wars against Napoleon. In the spring of 1848 he was elected by the district of Naumburg to the German National Parliament. Jahn died in Freyburg, where a monument was erected in his honor in 1859.
Among his works are the following:
- Bereicherung des hochdeutschen Sprachschatzes (Leipzig, 1806),
- Deutsches Volksthum (Lübeck, 1810),
- Runenblätter (Frankfurt, 1814),
- Die Deutsche Turnkunst (Berlin, 1816)
- Neue Runenblätter (Naumburg, 1828),
- Merke zum deutschen Volksthum (Hildburghausen, 1833), and
- Selbstvertheidigung (Vindication) (Leipzig, 1863).
A complete edition of his works appeared at Hof in 1884-1887. See the biography by Schultheiss (Berlin, 1894), and Jahn als Erzieher, by Friedric (Munich, 1895).
Jahn popularized the motto "Frisch, Fromm, Fröhlich, Frei" ("Hardy, Pious, Cheerful, Free") in the early 19th century. The band Jawbreaker appropriated the German monogram with four F's for use on their early releases up to and including Bivouac.
[edit] Criticism
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (January 2008) |
The German Wikipedia article on Friedrich Jahn suggests that Jahn was a politically ambivalent figure. Jahn was undoubtedly a German nationalist, and he advocated maintaining German language and culture against foreign influence. He was also an antisemite. In 1810 he wrote, "Poles, French, priests, aristocrats and Jews are Germany's misfortune."
At the time Jahn wrote this, the German states were occupied by foreign armies under the leadership of Napoleon; under the circumstances it may be anachronistic to object to Jahn's xenophobia, though not to his antisemitism.
Moreover, in 1817 Jahn organised a public book-burning, a political gesture that took on an even more sinister form under the Nazis a little over a century later.
However, in his time Jahn was seen by both his supporters and his opponents as essentially a liberal figure, which by the standards of his time he probably was. He advocated that the German states should unite after the withdrawal of Napoleon's occupying armies, and establish a democratic constitution (under the Hohenzollern monarchy), which would include the right to free speech.
Jahn gained infamy in English-speaking countries through the publication of Peter Viereck's "Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind" (1941, re-published in 1961 and 2003 with variant subtitles). Viereck claimed Jahn as the spiritual founder of Nazism, who inspired the early German romantics with antisemitic and authoritarian doctrines, and then influenced Wagner and finally the Nazis.
However, Jacques Barzun observed that Viereck's portrait of cultural trends supposedly leading to Nazism was "a caricature without resemblance" relying on "misleading shortcuts". (Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol 3, No 1, Jan 1942, pp 107-110.) Viereck's claims concerning Jahn's supposed cultural influence, and influence on Nazism in particular, are not supported by evidence. The writings of the German romantics do not even discuss Jahn, let alone endorse him. Joseph von Eichendorf's 1823 comedy "Krieg den Philistern" is unusual in mentioning Jahn at all, but does so only in order to ridicule him. Wagner, much influenced by Jahn according to Viereck, never even mentioned him.
Nor, perhaps for different reasons, did the Nazis show any interest in Jahn. Jahn had been an antisemite, but also a liberal and an outspoken democrat, so he was neither congenial nor useful. Though the Nazis were keen to posthumously recruit "great Germans", for example claiming Goethe, Schopenhauer, Schiller, Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, Kant, Luther and many others for their cause, Jahn was not mentioned in "Mein Kampf" or in Hitler's other writings and speeches, and was also absent from the theoretical writings and speeches of Nazi ideologues like Goebbels and Rosenberg.
Jahn's influence, for good or ill, should not be exaggerated. He was a figure of his time who reflected the prejudices of his time, in particular in his antisemitism, but who in other ways looked forward to a democratic future.
[edit] Contribution to sports
Jahn invented the parallel bars, balance beam, vaulting horse and the horizontal bar. He is often described as the "father of gymnastics" (Turnvater).
In honor and memory of him, some gymnastic clubs (German:Turnvereine), took up his name, the most well known of these is propably the SSV Jahn Regensburg.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Turnvater Jahn |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | German Prussian gymnastics educator and nationalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 11, 1778 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lanz in Brandenburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 15, 1852 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Freyburg |
