Anotace:
The Turner movement, founded in the beginning of the 19th century by Friedrich L. Jahn, played an important role in organizing leisure time activities of the Sudeten German population during the first half of the 20th century. After splitting from the Austrian Turners, the Sudeten German Turners took over not only the methodology of practice, but also incorporated some of their ideological standpoints. At the beginning, Sudeten German Turner clubs considered themselves apolitical; the main goal of the Sudeten German Turners was physical and moral education of youth. Notwithstanding this original purpose, over time they became a political tool for Sudeten German political representation and executors of various forms of sedition towards the Czechoslovakia. Not even strong ideological contradictions within the Turner movement stopped it from becoming isolated from other Czechoslovak sport organizations and from disseminating pan-German goals and ideas in Czechoslovakia. The Turners provided Sudeten German youth not only with physical education; the organization became an influential tool of socialization as well. This paper reveals the political goals of Sudeten German Turner clubs in the terms of its historical development and provides an overview of the most important Sudeten German Turner club DTV (Deutscher Turnverband). It also clarifies how, the originally physical education-orientated DTV contributed to the breaking-up of Czechoslovakia.