Turners are members of German-American gymnastic clubs called Turnvereine. They promoted German culture, physical culture, and liberal politics. Turners, especially Francis Lieber (1798–1872), were the leading sponsors of gymnastics as an American sport and the field of academic study.
Gymnastics room in Turner Hall, Milwaukee, ca. 1900
3,000 Turners performed at the Federal Gymnastics Festival in Milwaukee, 1893.
Group portrait of the St. Louis, Missouri Turnverein in 1860.
Postage stamp commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the American Turners
Johann Friedrich Ludwig Christoph Jahn was a German gymnastics educator and nationalist whose writing is credited with the founding of the German gymnastics (Turner) movement as well as influencing the German Campaign of 1813, during which a coalition of German states effectively ended the occupation by Napoleon's First French Empire. His admirers know him as "Turnvater Jahn", roughly meaning "Father of Gymnastics Jahn". Jahn invented the parallel bars, rings, high bar, the pommel horse and the vault horse.
Friedrich Ludwig Jahn
Jahn on a German Notgeld bill from 1922 issues in Lenzen
Illustrations of pommel horse exercises in an English translation of Jahn's Treatise on Gymnasticks, 1828
Memorial in Vienna
