Review of: Daniel Wildmann: Der veränderbare Körper. Jüdische Turner, Männlichkeit und das Wiedergewinnen von Geschichte in Deutschland um 1900. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck Verlag 2009.

Abstract

In his study, which is informed by discourses on the history of the body, Daniel Wildmann examines national Jewish gymnastics clubs in Germany during the period from 1898 to 1921. He traces the manner in which we can locate the model of a Jewish gymnastics collective within the political debates found in the field of tension between Zionism and anti-Semitism during the German empire. Further, he pursues the question as to which medical discourses and debates connect to the physical-therapeutic effects of gymnastics. The focus of his work is, however, to address the gendered coding of Jewish gymnasts’ bodies, both male and female. Here, Wildmann shows that the conception of an ideal Jewish masculinity is determined in particular by a persistent appropriation and reinterpretation of ideas found in Jewish antiquity as well as masculine body images perpetuated by officers.