[The Gymnastic exhibition of the]
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☞The Gymnastic exhibition of the German Turners, at the Odeon on Monday evening, was exceedingly interesting.1 Although enough was realized to more than defray the expenses, yet the audience was not so large as might reasonably have been expected. The singing, under the lead of Mr. Lux, was excellent, and the athletic and agile performances of about sixty adults, and thirty lads, who took part, were pleasing proofs of the capacity of the human subject to increase his physical powers by regular and repeated exercise. The study and practice of gymnastics is by no means so popular as it ought to be; hence we regret that such an exhibition as that of the Turners, which was calculated to inspire a love for athletic exercises, was not more largely attended; and the force of such an example felt among other classes of our citizens.
Notes:
1. The German Turners were members of the "Turnverein" (gymnastic club) movement, which consisted mainly of so-called German "Forty-Eighters" (political refugees fleeing the European revolutions of 1848) who endorsed a body politic of rigorous health and republican, liberal politics and have been suggested as a model for Whitmna’s own health theorizing in "Manly Health and Training" (Peter Riley, "'Arm, Fortify, Harden, Make Lithe, Himself': 'Manly Health,' German Turners, and Whitman's Poetics of Training," The Oxford Handbook of Walt Whitman, eds. Kenneth M. Price and Stefan Schöberlein [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2024], 225–42). Whitman had a documented interest in the movement and its members, having written about them as early as the late 1840s while editor of the New Orleans Daily Crescent. [back]