In 1774, a school in Dessau, Saxony included physical exercises with the other classes. These classes were established by the school instructor, Johann Bernhard Basedow, a Prussian. This began the modernization of gymnastics, also thrusting Germany into the sport. German Friedrich Ludwig Jahn invented the horizontal bar, the parallel bars, the balance beam, and jumping events. He is considered the "father of modern gymnastics."
Gymnastics thrived in Germany and Sweden, where a more graceful form of the sport was developed by Guts Muth. This form of gymnastics tested rhythmic movement. The opening of Jahn's school in Berlin in 1811 promoted his version of the sport, the school being followed by many more |
across Europe. Gymnastics was introduced to the United States by Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent. He taught gymnastics in several U.S. universities around the time of the Civil War, also inventing more than 30 pieces of apparatus. Most of the growth of gymnastics in the United States centered on the activities of European immigrants, who introduced the sport in their new cities in the 1880s.
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