Book: Documentation of the conference “200 years of gymnastics in Württemberg” on 18 May 2016 in Calw-Hirsau

Hirsau, in the fall of 1816: Something extraordinary happens in the small Swabian town of barely 350 souls: Five young men get together to do gymnastics. The work of the founder of the German gymnastics movement, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, “Die deutsche Turnkunst”, which had just been published in Lübeck in the spring, served as a model for them. They are “serious about the dear German fatherland”, as they confide in their gymnastics diary; because the “genuine gymnastics” stands “in the closest connection … with patriotic spirit and strength”. They also want to restore the lost balance between soul and body. Their motto is: “Fresh, free, cheerful and pious”. The preceptor of Leonberg, Friedrich Wilhelm Klumpp, who would later be called the "Swabian gymnastics father," was involved in the founding. If this alone is remarkable, the founding of an association with self-imposed laws, treasury and board of directors is even more so. The capital Stuttgart will have its gymnastics center only one year later.
This small group of gymnasts stood at the cradle of gymnastics in Württemberg.
Recollection has only become possible since the discovery of the “Gymnastics Diary” by Siegfried Greiner from Hirsau in 1972, through whose bequest it is kept in the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart.