Abstract

The spread of sport in Germany was not tied to the rapid industrial development and urbanisation taking place between the nineteenth and twentieth century, but to the history of the gymnastic movement founded by Friedrich Jahn. At the end of the nineteenth century, sports were particularly popular among the sons of the élite educated at the universities of the «Kaiserreich». For this reason, the Spd was rather suspicious of sports, considered bourgeois and anti-socialist. This attitude changed when, with the fall of the Empire, and the founding of the Republic, sport came to be seen by the Spd as a cornerstone in the formation of the young generations. This paper intends to provide a panorama of relations between the socialist press and the role of sport in the Weimar Republic. The research is carried out on the main newspaper of the Spd «Vorwärts»