Models of manliness and femininity: The physical culture of the Enlightenment and early national movement in Germany, 1770--1819

This dissertation examines the growth of public interest in healthy, well-trained male bodies in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth century Germany and traces the spread of physical training programs and the development of a new physical culture designed to produce these bodies. It explains why these programs emerged when they did, how they came to be coded masculine, and what role they played in reinforcing masculine notions of citizenship and constructing patriotic and national identities for educated men. It argues that between 1770 and 1820 physical culture took on a new significance for a growing number of educated men as they learned to use it to confirm their masculinity and carve out civic and national identities for themselves.; The first three chapters examine the factors that fuelled the growth of public concern for physical fitness and sparked a "gymnastics revival" in the late eighteenth century: the politics of the absolutist state and an emergent civil society; the identity formation of the educated middle-class; the tensions that emerged from the polarization of the sexes and the new tendency to ground gender ideals and identities in the body. The rest of the dissertation explores why public concern about healthy male bodies increased and gymnastics programs spread throughout Germany during and after the Napoleonic period. It traces the transformations in the discourse and practice of patriotism that occurred between 1806 and 1813/14 that simultaneously drew public attention to embodied ideals of "heroic manliness" and closed earlier possibilities for a new physical culture for women. Finally, the dissertation considers the role that the German gymnastics movement played in constructing new national identities for young educated men.; The study is based on a wide array of sources: eighteenth-century medical and pedagogical literature; the writings of early German nationalists and newspapers, pamphlets, poetry, and song from the Napoleonic era; material relating to the first wave of the German gymnastics movement, including pamphlets and newspapers articles on patriotic gymnastics; handbooks, songbooks, and memoirs, produced by German gymnasts; and records relating to the movement produced by the Prussian state.