ABSTRACT
Since the late eighteenth century, German contributions to developments in sport and physical education have been significant and widespread. GutsMuths' natural form of gymnastic exercises, shaped from a range of pan-European ideas and practices, provided a conceptual framework, which became a springboard for subsequent initiatives both in sport and physical education initially throughout the European region and later beyond. The Jahn-inspired gymnastics movement was a singularly Germanic activity, which had socio-political significance at the time of its evolution in the quest for a unified German nation. Jahn's Turner gymnastics in its translated form gave the world ‘Olympic gymnastics’, which has endured the passage of time into the present millennium as an area of activity engagement from local to international levels. The thread of sociopolitical links with sport and physical education continued in the Hitler-led National Socialist period and in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). A pre-eminent role was assigned to physical and sporting activity, both in schools and the wider society, exemplified of course by the successful but notoriously infamous Berlin Olympic Games of 1936, and by the post World War II era of a divided Germany, in which, in the GDR in particular, sport was employed to achieve political goals in nation– and national consciousness-building as well as being a demonstration of ideological supremacy. Alongside its template-setting ‘big brother’, the Soviet Union, the GDR, with its relatively small population of around 17 million, set benchmarks in elite sport structures and delivery systems which served to bring about a shift in sporting power and became a catalyst for changes elsewhere in the world. Pre– and post World War I planning concepts, largely driven by Carl Diem, laid foundations for policies on community facilities for sport, recreation and physical education using basic principles around per capita space provision. The principles were later adapted when the German Olympic Society (DOG) fostered the ‘Golden plan in the communities’ (1961–75) in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) as well as in other countries. Another significant German contribution to the world of sport was the trail-blazing German Sports Federation's (Deutscher SportBund or DSB) ‘Second way’ (Zweiter Weg) campaign launched in 1959 at about the time that the GDR was flexing its sporting muscles. As an initiative to promote popular or mass sporting activity, it was intended to complement the proven forms of sporting activity in clubs and associations and serve the recreative and sporting needs of a broader social spectrum. Without doubt, it was an influential forerunner of one of the first national ‘Sport for all’ programmes established in 1967 in Norway under the name of ‘Trim’. Variations of the Norwegian programme quickly spread south, with the then West Germany itself introducing a Trim dich durch Sport programme in 1970. Countries from all continental regions have gradually adopted the concept, albeit under a range of different titles.
