BDQ

Mr. Young
APEC
18 February 2011
DBQ
    Much of Europe during the 1860’s to about the 1940’s was going through a sporting phase. Because the economy was thriving during this era, the popularity of leisure activities grew along with it. People were beginning to afford to go out and have time to themselves during the weekends. Visits to the beach, bicycles, newspapers, amusement parks and dances were all examples of entertainment available for the growing masses of people during this time. One of the most popular of these new sorts of liesure activities were sports. Nationalism, women’s rights and military were all large elements influenced and connected to these new sports.
    Miroslav Tyrs, cofounder of the Czech National Gymnastics Organization gave a speech connecting nationalism to gymnastics by saying that sports brings people together into a strong body (Doc 1). As the cofounder, he must have been a very respected man who people supported in his speeches. Another man (Doc 4) who was an African delegate of a British colony also gave a speech similar to Tyrs, connecting the sport rugby to teamwork. He believed that such sports created teamwork, therefore creating a sense of nationalism. Without this teamwork, we would be far less powerful than being all separate individuals.
    A chart displaying the membership growth in the Czech National Gymnastics Organization from 1865-1912 shows that women were beginning to become included in the counting for the first time ever. The numbers rose dramatically between 1905 and 1910 because of this. This shows that women were beginning to become included along with the men. More importantly, these graphs were being published. A bit later in history in 1930 (doc 10), a woman physician named Alice Profe used her facts to argue that women are no different than men. This was published in a sports newspaper, and her message that women are equal to men was stated. Ingeborg Shroder (doc 12), a Swedish gymnast stated that sports gave women a new freedom usually shunned in the modern community. This was not published until nearly 60 years after it was mentioned in their autobiography, possibly the time where people began accepting that women deserve their own freedom.
    In 1913, Martin Berner a Berlin journalist (Doc 5) published an article comparing the playing field of sports to the battle field in war. As a journalist, one could assume that he was probably pushing the truth as most journalists do to entertain their readers. He said that the Olympic games were a real war which of course symbolic. Document 6 shows the image of a British imperial government recruitment poster for WWI with the heading “The game of war”, which was a connection from sports to war. It’s conveying the message that war is the biggest game, the most important of them all. This was all purely for advertising proposes to get young men to enlist for the war. A segment from the British National Workers Sports association leans in an entirely different direction, stating that sports led to peace. Instead of fighting to the death on the battle field, it would be much better to let out the aggression through sports.
    All in all, Europeans had many varying opinions about sports, as you could tell through these writings, speeches and posters. Some believed that sports could lead to nationalism and sense of pride, which would eventually create a stronger union with more power. They thought that sports could act as a sort of training for war, or that war was a sport itself. Some believed that sports would lead to more women’s rights and a better sense of equality among the sexes. Other believed that sports could bring peace actually by replacing the wars themselves. These opinions could arguably be still be stated in our society today. The role of sports have of course changed dramatically, but not all people have changed much since the 1860’s-1940’s.