SPORT 1913 - 2013

part two_CHAPTER 6

people in the leading industrial countries of Europe began to practice physical exercise, gymnastics and sport in their free time. The opportunities for these activities were at that time rather scarce: the daily working time was normally from ten to twelve hours or even more. (See e. g. Jones 1979; Teichler 1980) Sport clubs and other facilities of physical ex- ercise belonged to the middle and upper class- es. Gradually workers, too, were allowed to join the bourgeois national sport organisa- tions. However, only establishing clubs of their own made it possible for workers in a larger scale to become participants of modern physical culture. Still, in the first phase in many European countries workers sport clubs joined the national sport organisations. Quite soon, the timely question arose whether or not the working people could achieve the aims of their physical culture within the framework of sport organisations dominated by the national bourgeoisie. The working class sport policy was connected to the general political objectives of the socialist worker movement. This ideological turn led to formation of an autonomous labour sport movement. In a number of European coun- tries nation-wide worker sport organisations sprang up around the turn of the 19 th to the 20 th century (Krüger & Riordan, 1985). Development in German Speaking Parts of Europe Even before the First World War especially in the German speaking parts of Europe in Ger-

many, Austria and Switzerland organised la- bour sport grew into a mass movement of hundreds of thousands people. The first na- tion-wide worker sport organisations in Ger- many and Austria were created by labour gymnasts. In a meeting held in Gera in 1893, the German Arbeiter-Turnerbund (ATB) was established. (Ueberhorst 1973, 18–22) At the same time, Austrian labour gymnasts sepa- rated from the bourgeois gymnastic move- ment and founded an organisation of their own (Krammer 1981, 16–21). Its foundation is regarded to be connected with the initiative made by the Social Democrats in 1892 to build “die Arbeiter Turn- und Sportbewegung – the Workers Gymnastic and Sport Movement” in Austria. Gradually devotees of some other sport disciplines, too, were organised. In Ger- many a nation-wide Central Commission for Cooperation in Sport and Physical Culture (Zentralkommission für Sport und Körperp- flege) was established in 1912. At the end of the 1920’s, eleven labour sport unions repre- senting different disciplines of labour sport and culture belonged to this central commis- sion. They counted altogether more than 1.3 million members. The biggest union with 0.7 million members was the Arbeiter-Turn- und Sportbund (ATSB) representing gymnastics, track and field, soccer, winter sports and some other disciplines (Ueberhorst 1973, 111–114). A strong organisation with more than 320 000 members was the Labour Cyclists’ Association (Arbeiter-Radfahrerbund ‘Solidarität ’). (Beduhn 1982) Very popular was also the La-

bour Tourist Association ‘Friends of the Na- ture’ (Touristenverein ‘Die Naturfreunde’). (Wunderer 1977; Zimmer 1985) In 1924 all Austrian worker sport unions representing different disciplines succeeded in creating a single central organisation: Workers’ Association for Sport and Physical Culture in Austria (Arbeiterbund für Sport und Körperkultur in Österreich, ASKÖ). By the end of the 1920’s the central organisation counted about a quarter of million members. (Krammer 1983, 95–98) In 1971, the ASKÖ was renamed to Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Sport und Körperkultur in Österreich. The Austrian worker sport movement was and still is one of the backbones of the CSIT. In Switzerland worker sport clubs created in 1922 the Swiss Workers Gymnastic and Sport Associations (Schweizerischer Arbeiter- Turn und Sport- bund SATUS) originally founded in 1874 for their central organization. Since then it has belonged to the Workers Sport International and still is the member of the CSIT. Downright the opposite from Germany and Austria was the development of worker sport in the United Kingdom: the British worker sport was never organised in a larger scale on national level. In Britain, there were a great number of local labour sport clubs for devo- tees of different disciplines, too. The most fa- mous of them was the socialist Cyclist Club “Clarion” founded in Birmingham in 1894. Development in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia

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