The Early Women of Milwaukee Turners

By Arpita Sangani

The Milwaukee Turners are a German American organization that was established in 1853 to promote physical exercise as well as cultural and civic participation in the city. I have been lucky enough to look through their 168 years of historical archives in order to find how women participated in physical exercise through the Turners.

I am a junior at Marquette University studying history, and this semester I am working with Dr. Alison Efford on a project on women Turners. A grant from the Institute for Women’s Leadership has supported me while I work through old photographs, documents, and publications in Milwaukee’s historic Turner Hall. I have helped executive director Emilio de Torre organize accumulated historical materials. While working at Turner Hall, I have been able to tour the building and learn about decades of events and stories that have happened in the various rooms. I’ve also found non-Turners related materials such as a photograph of inflatable statues of KISS members on their 1996 tour. Other interesting finds have been a letter from the Communist party to Milwaukee worker organizations in 1931, and multiple attempts of cookbooks by the Ladies Auxiliary.

I found evidence that women’s role in the organization was endless, but there was little record of their participation in physical exercise prior to the 1930s. However, I was able to find a certificate and a photograph from 1906 and 1925 respectively that show that women’s participation. The certificate is Anna Glaettli’s and shows that she took classes in apparatus and gymnastics since 1906. The photograph is of the victorious women’s Turner team who played Faustball, or fistball, against Deutscher Athletic in 1925. It is unclear if Deutscher Athletic was a local Wisconsin team or if they were a German national team. The third picture is a collection of photographs that were taken around 1937. Fortunately, there are other records of women’s exercise that have survived in the archives of UW-Milwaukee which show that women were involved in Turner exercise beginning in the 1880s, 30 years after the start of the Milwaukee Turners.