Friedrich Ludwig Jahn

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Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, commonly known as Turnvater Jahn (roughly, "father of gymnastics"), (August 11, 1778, Lanz (Prignitz) - October 15, 1852, Freyburg) was a German Prussian gymnastics educator and patriot.

Jahn studied theology and philology from 1796 to 1802 at Halle, Göttingen at the Greifswald. After the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 he joined the Prussian army. In 1809 he went to Berlin, where he became a teacher at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster and at the Plamann School.

Brooding upon the humiliation of his native land by Napoleon, he conceived the idea of restoring the spirits of his countrymen by the development of their physical and moral powers through the practice of gymnastics. The first Turnplatz, or open-air gymnasium, was opened by Jahn in Berlin in 1811, and the Turnverein (gymnastics association) movement spread rapidly. Young gymnasts were taught to regard themselves as members of a kind of guild for the emancipation of their fatherland. This patriotic spirit was nourished in no small degree by the writings of Jahn.

Early in 1813 he took an active part in the formation of the famous Lützow Free Corps, a volunteer force in the Prussian army fighting Napoleon. He commanded a battalion of the corps, though he was often employed in the secret service during the same period. After the war he returned to Berlin where he was appointed state teacher of gymnastics, and took on a role in the formation of the student patriotic fraternities, or Burschenschaften, in Jena.

A man of democratic nature, rugged, honest, eccentric and outspoken, Jahn often came into collision with the reactionary spirit of the time, and this conflict resulted in the closing of the Turnplatz in 1819 and the Jahn's arrest. Kept in semi-confinement at the fortress of Kolberg until 1824, he was sentenced to imprisonment for two years. The sentence was reversed in 1825, but he was forbidden to live within ten miles of Berlin. He therefore took up residence at Freyburg on the Unstrut, where he remained until his death, with the exception of a short period in 1828, when he was exiled to Colleda on a charge of sedition.

Jahn on a German Notgeld bill from 1922 issues in Lenzen (http://www.germannotes.com)

In 1840 he was decorated by the Prussian government with the Iron Cross for bravery in the wars against Napoleon. In the spring of 1848 he was elected by the district of Naumburg to the German National Parliament. Jahn died in Freyburg, where a monument was erected in his honor in 1859.

Among his works are the following:

Bereicherung des hochdeutschen Sprachschatzes (Leipzig, 1806),
Deutsches Volksthum (Lübeck, 1810),
Runenblätter (Frankfurt, 1814),
Die Deutsche Turnkunst (Berlin, 1816)
Neue Runenblätter (Naumburg, 1828),
Merke zum deutschen Volksthum (Hildburghausen, 1833), and
Selbstvertheidigung (Vindication) (Leipzig, 1863).

A complete edition of his works appeared at Hof in 1884-1887. See the biography by Schultheiss (Berlin, 1894), and Jahn als Erzieher, by Friedric (Munich, 1895).

Jahn popularized the motto "Frisch, Fromm, Fröhlich, Frei" ("Hardy, Pious, Cheerful, Free") in the early nineteenth century. The band Jawbreaker appropriated the German monogram with four F's for use on their early releases up to and including Bivouac.