A Guide to the History of Physical Education

ADOLF SPIESS, THE FATHER OF GERMAN SCHOOL GYMNASTICS.

By the Prussian cabinet order of June 6, 1842, already referred to (page 101), physical training was "formally recognized as a necessary and indispensable part of male education. " Minister Eichhorn, who was charged with putting this decree into effect, received that same summer a visitor from Switzerland who for eight years had been teaching gymnastics to boys and girls of all ages, as a regular branch of their school work, and who therefore seemed to have solved successfully, on a small scale, the problem of incorporating the subject into the school plan. He was asked by the Minister to submit in writing a statement of the measures which in his judgment would accomplish the same result in the Prussian state, and the reply to this request, dated at Burgdorf on the 18th of the following October, was contained in some "Thoughts on the method to be followed in making gymnastics an integral element in popular education. "[64] The steps therein advocated have since been taken, in part at least, by almost every German state, and the author, Adolf Spiess, now enjoys the undisputed title of "founder of school gymnastics in Germany and of gymnastics for girls in particular."