Abstrakt
The aim of this paper is to provide a general overview about the history of the so-called Sokol - the Czech gymnastic movement. However, in the center of the analysis is the "Weltanschauung" of the Sokol and its comparison with the "Weltanschauung" of the German "völkisch" gymnastic unions.
The Sokol was founded 1862 in Prague by active and well networked Tandem Miroslav Tyrš - Jindřich Fügner. Soon this first Prague association became a prototype for similar associations in other towns in the whole Austrian monarchy and 1904 all these Sokol-associations were united in an umbrella organisation.
This process animated the founding of further Sokol-association in other Slavonic states and communities all over the world, so the Sokol-movement can be defined as a worldwide phenomenon. In numerous works Miroslav Tyrš provided a basis for the Sokol-"Weltanschauung".
He dealt repeatedly with nationalism, Pan-Slavism, militarism, the Hussite-cult, the cult of beauty, democracy and ethic. After his death this ideas were band to a complex "Weltanschauung" which had many similarities with the official dogma of the "völkisch" gymnasts "Rassenreinheit, Volkseinheit, Geistesfreiheit" (i.e. purity of the race, unity of the nation, freedom of the spirit).
Yet the idea of democracy and humanism was still so strong in the Sokol-"Weltanschauung" that it neutralized the aggressiveness of other ideological paradigm. In 1990, after many years of suppression, the Sokol-organisation was revived and now it continues identifying with the "Weltanschauung" which was formed in the 19th century.
An uncritically insisting of all that ideas like nationalism or militarism could be very dangerous at the time of the "migrant-crisis", populism and growing right-wing extremism.