ABSTRACT
Teresa Sanislo’s contribution continues the examination of the non-natural of exercise and rest. She looks at the ways that the theme of “mensa sana in corpore sano” was understood in medical, moral and national terms in a key period. In particular, she examines the so-called Philanthropinist movement, a group of German intellectuals such as Christian Salzmann, Johann Bernhard Basedow and Joachim Heinrich Campe, who drew on the work of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to advance an Enlightenment conception of educational theory. The movement was especially interested in the medical, moral and patriotic importance of exercise. Like the chapters by Kennaway, Knoeff, Schmidt and Hunter, Sanislo shows the role of medical fears about modern urban life, arguing that concerns about the “feminisation” of modern Germans were behind the focus on patriotic physical fitness.
