Turn Verein

The Birmingham Turn Verein or Birmingham German Turn Verein ("Gymnastic Union") was an athletic club and political society founded by German immigrants in Birmingham.

The club was part of a national turnverein movement launched by the "forty-eighters", a group that fled Germany in advance of the political revolutions of 1848. The original movement promoted the practice of gymnastics according to the system set forth in 1811 by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. In the 1850s the organization pushed for the introduction of physical education into public schools. The national group also promoted the abolition of slavery and economic socialism, but those positions were often set aside by local chapters.

Birmingham's Turn Verein was founded in the 1880s by a group that included Emil Lesser.

The Birmingham Turn Verein met at their own Turn Verein Hall in downtown Birmingham. The group also organized the first Birmingham Choral Society and was heavily involved in organizing the city's short-lived Mardi-Gras celebrations.

References

• Harris, Carl V. (1977) Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921. Twentieth-Century America Series. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 087049211X