Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-176) and index.
Introduction : Building a better German -- Disorder on the court : Soft men, hard women, and steamy tennis -- Belle of the brawl : The boxer between sensationalism and sport -- German engineering : Duty, performance, and the track and field athlete -- Conclusion : Body beyond Weimar : Germany's athletic legacy.
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In Body by Weimar, Erik N. Jensen shows how German athletes reshaped gender roles in the turbulent decade after World War I and established the basis for a modern body and modern sensibility that remain with us to this day. The same cutting-edge techniques that engineers were using to increase the efficiency of factories and businesses in the 1920's aided athletes in boosting the productivity of their own flesh and bones. Sportswomen and men embodied modernityᵱuite literallyᵩn its most streamlined, competitive, time-oriented form, and their own successes on the playing fields seemed to prove the value of economic rationalization to a skeptical public that often felt threatened by the process. Enthroned by the media as culture's trendsetters, champions in sports such as tennis, boxing, and track and field also provided models of sexual empowerment, social mobility, and self-determination. They showed their fans how to be modern and, in the process, sparked heated debates over the aesthetics of the body, the limits of physical exertion, the obligations of citizens to the state, and the relationship between the sexes. If the images and debates in this book strike readers as familiar, it might well be because the ideal body of todayᵳleek, efficient, and equally available to men and womenᵲeceived one of its earliest articulations in the fertile tumult of Germany's Roaring Twenties. After more than eighty years, we still want the Weimar body. --Book Jacket.
BMBF-Statusseminar
Athletes-- Germany-- Public opinion-- 20th century.
Athletes-- Germany-- Social conditions-- 20th century.
Body image-- Germany-- History-- 20th century.
Sex role-- Germany-- History-- 20th century.
Sports-- Sex differences-- Germany-- 20th century.
Sports-- Social aspects-- Germany-- History-- 20th century.
Body Image.
Gender Identity.
Athletes-- Germany-- Public opinion-- 20th century.
Athletes-- Germany-- Social conditions-- 20th century.
Athletes-- Public opinion.
Athletes-- Social conditions.
Body image-- Germany-- History-- 20th century.
Body image.
Geschlechterrolle
Körperbild
Leistungssport
Modernisierung
Sex role-- Germany-- History-- 20th century.
Sex role.
Sozialer Wandel
Sport
Sports-- Sex differences-- Germany-- History-- 20th century.
Sports-- Sex differences.
Sports-- Social aspects-- Germany-- History-- 20th century.