Gymnastic Education

Gymnastic Education
by Fritz von Bothmer.
Translated by Jaimen McMillan.

Count Fritz von Bothmer developed gymnastic exercises in the 1920s for children in the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart at the request of Rudolf Steiner. This was to teach posture and to develop movements in the children's limbs that would augment pedagogy. He developed approximately thirty exercises. They are a study of the archetypal dynamics of the human being in space.

Von Bothmer taught gymnastics at the Stuttgart Waldorf School until 1938, when the school was closed by the Nazi regime. The relationship between impaired movement and school performance has long been established, stressing the importance of developing fine and gross motor coordination in the growing child. Bothmer Gym helps today's children, who often grow up without the opportunity to engage in physical play and games, to find freedom in their movement again.

A Mercury Press title
92 pages.
28 x 21 cms.
Wiro-bound.