Sport in Germany

Sport in Germany is an important part of German culture and society. In 2006 about 27.5 million people were members of the more than 91,000 sport clubs in Germany. Almost all sports clubs are represented by the Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund (DOSB, German Olympic Sports Federation).

Friedrich Ludwig Jahn known as Turnvater Jahn (father of gymnastics) was born in 1778 and worked as an assistant teacher in Berlin. At Berlin's Hasenheide Friedrich Ludwig Jahn opened the first German gymnastics field ('Turnplatz'), or open-air gymnasium, in spring 1811. His activities were particularly pointed at the youth, with whom he went to the gym field in free afternoons. The German gymnastics, understood by Jahn as a whole of the physical exercises.

Jahn developed well-known gymnastic equipment, invented also new apparatuses. Particularly by his main writing "Die Deutsche Turnkunst" (1816) the apparatus gymnastics developed to an independent kind of sport, and so the gym activities were not only limited to simple physical exercises, which he quoted as following: "Going, running, jumping, throwing, carrying are free exercises, everywhere applicable, as free as fresh air."

With the national gymnastics festivals in Coburg in 1860, in Berlin in 1861 and in Leipzig in 1863, the memory of Jahn's ideas returned into the people's consciousness. The inscription at the gable of his house "Frisch, Fromm, Fröhlich, Frei", translated as 'fresh, pious, cheerful, free", which originated in Jahn's time, became the basic idea of the German gymnastics movement.

In the all-time Olympic Games medal count through 2006 Germany ranks fifth, East Germany seventh and West Germany twenty-first. If all the medals are combined Germany ranks third.

Germany has hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice, in Berlin in 1936 and in Munich in 1972. Germany hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1936 when they were staged in the Bavarian twin towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen.

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