1849Alsfeld gymnasts for national unity

The Alsfeld Gymnastics Club (Turnverein) was founded during the period of social upheaval of the bourgeois revolution of 1848/49. The gymnastics movement, which drew on Locke, Rousseau, Guts Muths, and Pestalozzi, was primarily strengthened by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (later known as the “father of gymnastics”), who sought to erase the “shame” of the defeat against Napoleon by opening his gymnastics ground in Berlin’s “Hasenheide” in 1811. On his outdoor facilities, he intended to train patriotic soldiers strengthened by physical exercise for the national unity he strived for.

Gymnastics clubs saw themselves as “places for strengthening democratic thought,” and through the “education of body and spirit,” their commitment manifested in voluntary citizens’ militias as well as in the “Fatherland Associations” founded starting in 1848. The strong community-oriented bond of the gymnasts was seen as a model for overcoming the hated fragmentation of small states, and the movement became a political one striving for the unity and freedom of the fatherland.

In Alsfeld, eleven men gathered on April 18, 1849, to found the gymnastics club. The gymnastics ground and the club’s pub were located at the founding venue, the “Gasthaus zur Krone.” The brotherly relationship among the gymnasts was expressed by addressing each other with the informal “Du,” and it was decided to “adopt the German colors black, red, and gold as the colors of the club.” The implementation of this resolution is shown in the image of the original club flag from 1849. (MNic)