Gymnastics between protestantism and libertinism from 1880 to 1940: A comparative analysis of two internationally renowned Danish gymnastics educators

The purpose of this article is to analyze and compare two internationally renowned Danish Gymnastics teachers, Jørgen Peter Muller and Niels Bukh. Whereas Muller’s home gymnastics had a cosmopolitan agenda that appealed to everyone regardless of ethnic origin, including many Jews, Bukh’s gymnastics increasingly became embedded in a right-wing nationalist frame of reference. Muller created an individual system of home gymnastics with a focus on health by means of exercises and the cleansing of the body that included a cold shower. In contrast, Bukh’s system was a collective form of gymnastics that emphasised the beauty of the young body. Common to both of them, however, was propagation of sexual liberation, which in Muller’s case focused on the naked heterosexual body’s manifestations in the sunlight and the fresh air. By contrast, Bukh was homosexual and through his aesthetic gaze he encouraged well-trained and sweaty young men to show their muscular upper body in touch-tight choreographies wearing only boxer shorts. It is the main thesis of the article that the contribution of sport to sexual liberation from late Victorianism’s firm grip is far greater than hitherto assumed

Oprøret på lægterne

Rebellion in the StandsAt the Danish national stadium in 1941, on 5 June, Denmark’s annually celebrated Constitution Day, no less, the Viennese football team Admira demonstrated its Greater Germany superiority with a 4 to 1 victory over a select Copenhagen team, thereby triggering among the Danish spectators a demonstratively negative reaction to a highly politicized programme of athletic collaboration with the Germans, who for their part set great store in it as a manifestation of the Reich’s “peaceful occupation” of Denmark. Even before the game began, the locals jeered at the guest team as it presented itself with the Nazi salute. During and especially after the contest the German soldiers in the stands were subjected to humiliating jibs and even bodily assault. The fact that the Austrians won the game no doubt played a part in the negative mood, but this is hardly an adequate explanation of the disarray, since spectator culture at that time in the history of Danish athletics was characterized by remarkable forbearance. Contemporary testimony of both participants and observers confirms this.Resistance to the occupying power at the Danish national stadium had consequences: the cooperative policy in the sports arena faltered - to the deep regret of the Danish athletic organisations, it may be added; under German pressure the Minister of Justice was replaced; and the Danish police were reorganised. The episode was not only the first instance of an extensive spectator disturbance in the history of Danish athletics, but also the first notable example in Denmark of open, collective aggressiveness towards the German Occupation. It took place before the student street demonstrations against the government’s accession to the Anti-Comintern Pact at the end of November 1941, which is traditionally cited in the literature on the period as the start signal for collective Danish defiance.In interpreting these events the article draws attention to the affinities between forms of protest or uprising characteristic of political commitment and the more general attraction to involvement and passion in the sports arena. However different in intent and reflective verbalization, the action-oriented forms of expression that are particularly distinct in sporting events and masculine working class culture can, as this example shows, also function as a genuine means of political protest.Translated by Michael Wolf

Idræt og politik. Niels Bukh i Østen, 1931

Artiklen gennemgår gymnastikpædagogens Niels Bukhs udenlandsrejser og internationale gennembrud, som det tog sig ud ud i 1930'erne, og fokuserer særligt på rejsen til Japan og Bukhgymnastikkens betydning for den japanske (skole)idræt.Sport and Politics – Niels Bukh in the East (1931)With his tour of the world in 1931, the Danish teacher of gymnastics, Niels Bukh, secured his reputation both at home and abroad as one of the great figures of his country, – a picture supported by the Danish Foreign Office regardless of the government’s political alignment. Bukh’s group was received by the highest ranking representatives of the Japanese occupying forces in Manchuria and Korea and became a part of Japanese propaganda in the region. The fact that Bukh’s gymnasts performed in Shenyang, the capital of Manchuria, shortly before the invasion may have been a small contribution to the attempt on the part of the Japanese military to persuade the Chinese that all was quiet on that front. Niels Bukh’s long performance tour of Japan was a triumph for him and undoubtedly also acted as a meeting point for a Japanese population which was looking for fellowship in the throes of the anxieties, not to say the passions, of war. The spread of Bukh’s gymnastics in Japanese school P.E. programmes of the 1930’s can be seen in the context of the government’s view that they constituted an efficient form of P.E. in the militarisation of youth which culminated in the escalation of the war against China in 1937 and the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7th December, 1941. Japan was the country in which Niels Bukh’s system of gymnastics became most widespread, – a fact which can be attested in Japan to this very day. Surprisingly enough, Danish gymnastics have probably made a greater quantitative contribution to Japanese physical culture than vice versa

Degeneration - Den sunde krop som symbol

Artiklen, som indgår i en forelæsningsrække om Sundhed og Idræt, behandler den stigende fedmeepidemi og ser på menneskekroppens forfald. Dertil diskuteres sundhedsdebattens og -kampagnernes fokus og vinkling.Degeneration – the healthy body as symbolThis article is an inaugural lecture for the first Danish chair in sportshistory. It does not take the form of a traditional research article but is rather an essay of a heuristic nature. The theme is a diagnosis of notions of degeneration in about 1900 and today. As was the case during the first half of the 20th century, we are today confronted with threats in regard to the decay of the human body, not least in the form of an epidemic of obesity and a lack of exercise in our daily lives. Can we learn from the dangerous political and religious health fanaticism which developed through anxiety about degeneration after the turn of the century? How do we prevent the huge health problems causing the onset of collective hysteria

Introduktion til Tony Mangan

Hans Bonde præsenterer Tony Mangan, der er forfatter til den efterfølgende artikel

Køn, klasser og kropskultur

Artiklen belyser bl.a. forholdet mellem sport og politik, hvordan køns- og klasseaspekter tager sig ud i den tidlige danske sport og sportens møde med fremmede kropskulturer

Samfundet som teater - Fra Caesar til Silvio

Med eksempler fra bl.a. det antikke Rom, det gamle Grækenland og nutidens valg af populistiske stjerner til politiske poster behandler artiklen tendensen til teatralisering af politikken. Society as theatre from Caesar to Silvio During the present period we are witnesses to yet another chapter in the tendency towards the theatricalisation of politics. People wish to be represented not by a stick-in-the-mud with political acumen and devoid of charisma but by actors. Where the USA has its actors and sports personalities entering politics, Italy has the opposite – politicians who provide the populace with theatre instead of an exchange of political opinions. If we cannot simply regard the development in Italy as a harmless special case, it is because the country, and not least Rome itself, has throughout its history provided a norm and a form for the association between aesthetics and politics. This article traces the Italian tendency towards the marriage of aesthetics and politics from ancient Rome, to Catholicism, to fascism and on to the modern Berlusconi regime

Vækkelsesprædikanten Kaptajn Jespersen mellem kald og videnskab

En biografisk skildring af Kaptajn Jespersen, der var leder for af morgen-radiogymnastikken 1927-1952, og hans virke inden for sportens verden, herunder hans syn på sport i relation til religion og sundhed

Vækkelsesprædikanten Kaptajn Jespersen mellem kald og videnskab

En biografisk skildring af Kaptajn Jespersen, der var leder for af morgen-radiogymnastikken 1927-1952, og hans virke inden for sportens verden, herunder hans syn på sport i relation til religion og sundhed

Guden der steg ned fra himlen - Niels Bukh, national identitet og politik

En biografisk skildring af gymnastikpædagogen Niels Bukhs virke i dansk og internationl idræt, herunder med belysning af bl.a. Bukhs deltagelse i De Olympiske Lege og hans tilknytning til Ollerup Gymnastikhøjskole