Fitness and music are two of my major interests, but if anyone follows me on Bluesky, they'll know that politics occupies a similarly large portion of my brain. Sometimes, two of these three major interests converge, and today is definitely one of those moments. Yesterday, I learned about the Turners, members of German-American gymnastics clubs called Turnverein. It strikes me that Americans could benefit greatly by emulating this German movement from the 1800s, and not just physically - maybe I'm being a hopeless optimist, but I think that embracing the teachings of this movement could go a long way towards healing some of the bigger sociopolitical issues in our country today. 

First, credit where credit is due: I learned about the Turners in the pages of A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting, the excellent book by fitness, science, and culture writer Casey Johnston. I've been reading her "Ask a Swole Woman" newsletter for many years and recommend it to anyone who's interested in fitness, especially those who are looking for some guidance on how to get started with their fitness journey. I'm about halfway through her book, and would already also recommend it to anyone looking for some approachable and entertaining information about how and why to start lifting.

Johnston writes that as she delved deeper into her own fitness journey, she learned more about the origins of American weightlifting and its connection to the German Turners. The founders of the Turners were concerned about the threat that Napoleon posed to the German homeland, and pushed for physical education under the theory that strong individuals would better be able to defend their country from invasion. But their attitude was far from militaristic. They weren't trying to produce an army of alpha bros with big muscles and bigger handlebar moustaches. The Turners were about collective empowerment. The Turner movement was generally liberal in nature, and many Turners took part in the Revolutions of 1848. After the revolutions failed, many Turners relocated to the United States, where they became active in public education and labor movements. The Turners were devoted abolitionists, and many fought for the Union in the Civil War. At the same time they were pushing for a more inclusive society, they were founding "Turner Halls," which were both centers of German culture and proto gymnasiums. 

The Turner Halls were centers of physical achievement, but importantly not of competition. Here's what Johnston had to say about the Turners in an interview with Defector about her book:

"They were not about achievement or winning. They didn't like that aspect of American Culture. They wanted to educate everyone to a sort of baseline level of physical fitness, because this is a way of sustaining our community, of protecting each other from outside powers that wants to divide and separate and disempower us. That was the origin of gyms, basically, in America as we know them today. The YMCA co-opted it. They too it for their own purposes of serving God and serving power." 

I want to call out one sentence from Johnston again, because it's central to the argument I have that we have a lot to learn from the Turners:

They wanted to educate everyone to a sort of baseline level of physical fitness, because this is a way of sustaining our community, of protecting each other from outside powers that wants to divide and separate and disempower us. 

There has been so much written in the last few years about how divided this country is and how directionless certain groups feel, especially young men. The partisan divide between men and women is large, and many people now say that they would never date a person of opposite political opinion. After shifting significantly to the right in the last presidential election, young men have shifted back to the left this year, but the conventional wisdom remains that young men have largely turned rightward because of frustration with the perceived collapse of men's roles in American society and the lack of a new, positive identity to strive for. 

The Turner movement offers a path of how to come together.

People love to rediscover historical ways of living - just ask the tradwives or paleo diet devotees. Imagine modern Turners clubs that ask people to join up to work towards a goal of not just strong bodies, and but strong communities. Follow the historical example of the original Turners and come together with shared goals of physical fitness, but also equality of gender and race, and solidarity of the working class. It's a positive, constructive vision, but also one that merges "softer" or left-leaning ideas with a core concept (physical fitness) that many see as more traditionally masculine or conservative. Turner clubs would offer people, particularly young men, a community and a place to develop, both physically and socially. And they would do so in a way that supportive of quote-unquote masculine goals, like building big, bulging muscles.

Membership in a society like the Turners, which stresses the strengthening of the community, could present something critical to so many people who feel like it is lacking in their lives: a place to belong. In a modern Turner club, it won't matter if you're not the biggest or the strongest. It only matters that you're devoted to improving your life - and the idea that others should have the opportunity to improve their lives as well.

​How could the Turner movement make a comeback? I don't have the foggiest idea, but I genuinely believe it's a worthwhile thought experiment. The American Turners still exist, mostly in the Midwest and primarily focused on the fitness side of the original Turners equation, particularly gymnastics. However, check out this mission statement from the home page of the Los Angeles Turners:

We believe in: 
Liberty against all oppression 
Tolerance against all fanaticism 
Reason against all superstition 
Justice against all exploitation 
Free speech, a free press, free assembly for the discussion of all questions so men and women may think unfettered and order their lives by the dictates of conscience, which we strive to attain through a Sound Mind in a Sound Body 
We endorse every effort to equalize conditions in our economic life to abolish class distinctions and maintain all human rights 
We believe every human being should be accorded every opportunity to secure for him or herself by mental and physical labor a dignified and decent livelihood. 

Imagine our society organizing itself under this mission statement. What a better, healthier world it would be.