ABSTRACT
Germany's long tradition in the education of coaches (just as with teachers) has its antecedents in the early nineteenth century, when ‘Turnvater’ Jahn recommended that coaches be prepared for Turnen by the Turner organisations themselves. They were, and subsequently the national sports governing bodies have seen it as a duty to follow in the Turners' footsteps. The sport governing bodies were quicker to agree on basic terms for coaches in individual sports at a national level than were the state governments for physical education teachers. For the past 150 years the German physical education system has therefore had the problem that instructors of some sort were prepared by two separate sets of authorities, private and public, and that both sides diligently ensured that their boundaries were not infringed upon (Krüger 1980a). The right to educate teachers (and coaches), as shown in Chapter 6, is a right of the individual Land. The central government encourages coordination of some sort, but constitutionally it cannot enforce it.
