Turners (German: Turner) are members of German-American gymnastic clubs called Turnverein. They promoted German culture, physical culture, liberal politics, and supported the Union war effort during the American Civil War. Turners, especially Francis Lieber, 1798–1872, were the leading sponsors of gymnastics as an American sport and the field of academic study.
St. Louis German "Turner" shooting Club This framed engraving depicts the rifle club of the “Saint Louis Turnverein 1860”; all the members depicted are identified, including A. Bottger (on left) and A. McLean (on right). Beginning in the 1830s many Germans were lured to Missouri by the romanticized descriptions of the state promoted by the Giessen Emigration Society, which described Missouri as the American Rhineland. German immigrants established organizations known as “Turnvereins,” similar to those they had belonged to in Germany. The group’s local societies acted as social, athletic, gymnastic, and political centers for German-Americans in the community, with members known as “Turners.”
Robert J. Rombauer discussed the shooting club in his book The Union Cause in St. Louis in 1861: “Soon after the organization of the society a rifle section was formed with about fifty members, who were pledged to military obedience when in service; they elected their officers and instructors and bought their own rifles; took up regular weekly drills, arranged target practices and trial marches to neighboring cities.”
The “Turner” of the Turner Brigade is not a who but a what. It refers to the members of the German Turner Society in St.Louis at the time of the Civil War. Turners taught gymnastics and physical culture to the German-American youth.
The “Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis”, published in 1899, states:
“Among those who fled to this country, upon the failure of the great reform movement in Germany, in 1848, were many men who had attended the celebrated gymnastic school, or Turnschule, of [Frederick Ludwig] Jahn. Some of those got together, and on May 12, 1850, formed a gymnastic society, or turnverein, to which they gave the name of “Bestrebung,” or Endeavor, which was afterward changed to the St. Louis Turnverein. When the Civil War broke out there were over five hundred enrolled members upon the list, but so many of these volunteered for service in the Federal Army that the work of the Turnhalle was almost brought to a standstill. The same ardent desire to free the slaves animated the Germans at that time throughout the country; for the most part political refugees themselves, they were pledged to liberty everywhere. As a result, entire companies of volunteers, and almost entire regiments, were made up almost exclusively of Turners; thus the Seventeenth Missouri was frequently referred to as the Western Turners’ Regiment.”
Click here to view an expandable version of this lithograph in the collection of the Missouri History Museum.
Overall, between 1800 and 1919 more than 7 million Germans immigrated to the United States with the majority settling in the central part of the country, including Missouri. From the 1830s to the 1860s Missouri’s population almost doubled with every decade, the majority being German immigrants. The decision to leave one’s family, friends, relatives, home and village was a very difficult one. While the reasons are many, here are some of the key ones: