Germania to Her Children
To this day, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn is innocuously called the “father of gymnastics”, although his work German National Traditions (1810) championed a nationalistic, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic German state. The gymnastics movement he co-founded aimed to train the population and make young Germans fit for military service. After the final victory over Napoleon in 1815, Jahn was also influential in the formation of student fraternities.