Adolph Leschen pioneer of gymnastics and physical education in South Australian schools from 1880s
Adolph Leschen giving a fencing lesson in Adelaide in about 1914. Miss L.L. Ayers on the left is only pupil identified.
Image courtesy German-Australian Genealogy & History Alliance
Heinrich Adolph Leschen, the father of gymnastics in South Australia, was influenced by the ideas of the charismatic educationist Friedrich Jahn while attending the University of Kiel, Schleswig. Leschen trained as a schoolteacher and belonged to a gymnastics group.
Migrating in 1857, he first tried farming, then started the German School (Deutsche Schule) in Wakefield Street, Adelaide, and was employed at the Adelaide Gymnasium in King William Street, teaching German gymnastics.
In 1864, he set up a Deutschen Turnverein (gymnastics club) in Flinders Street, attracting influential men such as chief justice Samuel Way. When Way joined the State Education Board in 1874, he argued for gymnastics to be part of South Australian schools.
This led to Leschen teaching gymnastics in South Australian model schools from 1881-84 and continuing to demonstrate it in many state schools and private colleges to encourage physical education.
Leschen’s popular annual displays of mass gymnastics at the Jubilee Exhibition Building, in North Terrace, encouraged local belief in combining character-building English sports with systematic European gymnastics. Employed as gymnastics and German master at the Collegiate School of St Peter in 1879-91, Leschen was also a part-time teacher at Prince Alfred College in 1881-92. Both colleges built gymnasiums—replicas of the model turnhalle of the Adelaide Turnverein.
He and his third son Hugo, who studied gymnastics in Germany in 1891-92, pioneered medical massage (physiotherapy) in South Australia in the 1890s, both working closely at Adelaide Hospital with anatomy professor Archibald Watson.
Retiring from school activities in 1892, Leschen continued teaching German gymnastics at the Adelaide Turnverein until 1909. Hugo, an enthusiastic volunteer soldier and sometime major in the cadet corps, succeeded his father as instructor at Prince Alfred College (where he had been educated) and from 1893 continued the annual demonstrations at the exhibition building. By 1900, more than 1500 of his pupils, from various schools, took part in these spectacular displays.
