3-043-728 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Festival of German Gymnastic Societies at Bonn, on the Rhine, 1872. 'A grand congress or united assembly of members of the many provincial gymnastic clubs...From every district...came a band of sturdy young fellows, exulting in this opportunity of proving their zeal for the common cause. They numbered altogether 4000; and the scene on the Sunday week, when they marched in procession through the streets of the town and along the Popplesdorf Allée, was full of animation. Having arrived at the place appointed, they exhibited to the admiring spectators a variety of athletic feats...The German Turn-Verein, or Gymnastic Club, is a peculiar national institution, which is associated with ideas of patriotism and of moral culture, as well as with the sports and exercises of athletic skill. It was set on foot throughout the Fatherland in the time of that general rising and striving to throw off the yoke of Napoleon I. which was the commencement of great reforms, educational and administrative, especially in the kingdom of Prussia. [Friedrich Ludwig] Jahn...devised and advocated the organisation of gymnastic societies among the German youth, with a view to improve their military efficiency and to discountenance immoral or effeminate habits'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.