Different Clubs, Similar Purposes? Gymnastics and Sports in the German Colony of SAo Paulo/Brazil at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

During the nineteenth century in Europe, new views on the body resulted in the development of two main systematisations of games and physical exercises: gymnastics and sports. During this period many European - among them many Germans - emigrated to the American continent in pursuit of new opportunities and a better life. In Brazil, the German immigrants settled primarily in the southern and south-eastern regions of the country, where they established many institutions with different purposes, such as clubs for the practice of the German gymnastics (Turnen) and sports. This study aimed at analysing Turnen and sports as specific ways of body education and also a means of preserving the German culture in the Turnerschaft von 1890 in SAo Paulo and Sport Club Germania. Both clubs were established by German immigrants in the city of SAo Paulo (Brazil) in the period between the end of the nineteenth century and the Second World War, a time period when all foreign institutions in Brazil were forced to go through deep structural changes.