Dr. Joachim K. Rühl (March 6, 1939 – August 24, 2025)
Thirty years of CESH was celebrated in Salerno at the recent CESH Conference. We showed photos of the happy founders, not knowing that ‘Jochen’ had died the week before in a nursing home in Cologne. Jochen was one of the three founders of CESH. In the European Physical Education Network, he always had his sport history section which he chaired for three years. At its 1995 Conference in Bordeaux the European College of Sports Science was founded. When it became obvious that their founders had not even thought about sports history or any other humanistic aspects of sports, it was time to start an organisation of our own. In Jochen’s section took its independence and CESH was founded.
Joachim Klaus Rühl was born in Berlin just before World War II. His parents left the war-torn city and went to the very west, to Trier. Here Jochen attended the Gymnasium and passed his Abitur at Easter 1958. He was active in athletics, a 1000 m champion of the Under 16 of the Rhineland. In Trier, the ancient Augusta Treverorum, the largest Roman City north of the Alps in the fourth century, you are bound to develop a fascination for history. At this time compulsory military service had just been re-introduced in Germany. As there was a tremendous shortage of teachers, if you were to study for a teaching exam, you were, however, exempted from the draft. Jochen went to near Saarbrucken and studied English and Physical Education, passing the separate sport teachers’ exam in 1961 working part-time in nearby Merzig. He, then he went to Kent for one school year as teaching assistant in a Grammar School. Before returning to Germany, he spent the summer in the Cotswold, being fascinated by the Cotswold Games. Coming back to Germany he passed the first high school teachers’ diploma in 1964 and the second in 1966 after one year of student teaching in Limburg and one in Koblenz. Due to his excellent exams and his superb knowledge of early modern English he was hired by the Department of English Studies as a University Assistant (1966-70) and served as main organiser of the Annual Assembly of all German university English departments in 1967. Then he switched over as Assistant in Physical Education and, wrote his PhD thesis on the Olympic Games of Robert Dover which was published in print in 1975. After his PhD defence in 1972 he was appointed (non-tenured) Assistant Professor for Physical Education.
He had started to assemble and publish a twice annual booklet of all staff, study and exam rules of all Physical Education Departments of the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, and the German speaking parts of Switzerland. Being the leading German expert on the PE rules and regulations (65 volumes 1966-2000), he was hired by the Cologne University of Sports to work in Central Administration as a now tenured Senior Lecturer. After 65 volumes he stopped as now the internet started to take over. The Rühl was an institution used in all of Germany. It was, extremely useful, but of limited academic value, so he would not progress in the German physical education departments, although there was a need in for young PhDs. Eventually, he only continued teaching in sports history but did all his administrative chores in the central administration of his university. The official university list contains 29 different functions he held in twenty-four years at this University.
In Bordeaux we had ninety minutes to develop the basis for the constitution of CESH, then there was the section meeting Jochen had put on the program, on September 14, 1995. Angela Teja, Jochen, and I had agreed that Jochen should chair the meeting and eventually, be elected the founding President. But there was not his customary five, but over fifty sports historians present. Jochen opened the meeting in English, started to explain what we had developed. The three of us were facing the audience, and I realized that apparently quite a number did not understand what Jochen had explained in English. I interrupted and asked in French, who had understood him. Only five people raised their hands, then I asked in English who would not understand, if we had the whole meeting in French: Just one. Jochen gave me a sign that I should carry on in French.
At the end I proposed Jochen as President of CESH – and there was a lot of opposition, as the majority was afraid that everything would be run in English again. Jochen whispered: ‘OK, then I make the Treasurer’. Angela volunteered to stage the first Congress in Rome. Jochen served as Treasurer (1995-98), General Secretary (1995-98), President (1999-2001), gave the Horst-Ueberhorst Honorary Address in 2002, was a Fellow (No. 3) of the original College of Fellows (later Honorary Fellow) and a keen organiser lending a helping hand whenever necessary.
Jochen researched and published high-quality papers on early modern sports, tournament rules of international knights, and eventually also on local German sports history, being a regular participant and presenter in CESH and in British sport history conferences. When I edited a book on the beginning of modern sports in the renaissance, he not only contributed a chapter but also helped with our extensive bibliography.
In the last years he lived in a nursing home in Cologne. He is survived by his wife and his twins Florian and Christian. When CESH was in Cologne in 2023 I saw him for the last time. In the formative years of CESH, Jochen was an institution with his straightforward organisational skill. But we will always remember him as a jolly good fellow.
Arnd Krüger
Dr. Joachim K. RÜHL (1939–2025)
The European Committee for Sports History (CESH) wishes to express its deepest sorrow at the passing of Dr. Joachim K. Rühl, an esteemed historian of sport and a committed servant of our association.
Dr. Rühl was one of the founding members of CESH and played a central role in the life of the association, serving with dedication and distinction as Treasurer (1995–1998), Secretary General (1995–1998), and later as President (1999–2001). His commitment, vision, and scholarly integrity were instrumental in strengthening our community during a decisive phase of its development.
As a historian, and as a long-time member of the German Sport University of Cologne, he contributed significantly to the study of sport within its broader social and cultural contexts, earning the respect and admiration of colleagues across Europe and beyond. As a colleague and a leader, he will be remembered for his generosity, his intellectual curiosity, and his tireless devotion to advancing the history of sport.
The memory of Dr. Joachim K. Rühl will remain with us as both an inspiration and a reminder of the values upon which CESH has been built: collaboration, rigor, and the promotion of historical knowledge.
The members of CESH extend their heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues. His legacy will continue to guide and inspire our work.
Juan Antonio Simón Sanjurjo
Marie-Madelaine FONTAINE
(1940-2024)
Marie-Madelaine Fontaine was one of the ten original Fellows of CESH. She was the leading specialist of the history of the body in the sixteenth century. A true European scholar she could communicate in French, Italian, and Spanish, and their early modern versions and dialects – and, of course, the lingua franca of that time: Latin.
After her preparation in the Classics (1960) she was accepted in the highly selective and prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure (Sèvres), where she specialized in French Literature of the Renaissance. Her first university appointment was that of a university assistant at the University of Rouen (1969) where she also went through the following steps in her career. She found her place when she presented a paper on the history of the body in Tours in 1979. She became one of the editors of the voluminous proceedings and from then on, she learned more and more about the body expressions and techniques in the renaissance. She presented her first paper at a sport history paper together with Guy Bonhomme on the history of swimming in the renaissance at HISPA in Lisbon in 1981. In 1982 she was appointed Maitresse de conférences at the Sorbonne where she stayed for eighteen years.
She did not shy back from the tedious small but important work, which is the basis for what we normal sports historians tend to do. The Dictionnaire des littératures françaises has 79 new pieces by her, more than by the formal editors. She published many annotated editions of renaissance books. She enjoyed using her skills on problems others did not dare to touch. One such example was the reconstruction of the life of Pietro del Monte (1457-1509), a condottiere whose troop of mercenaries fought in various Italian states, in France, Spain, and Portugal for the highest bidder without any ideological preference. A third generation condottiere he came from a noble family which included Dukes and Popes. As in each country del Monte had transformed his name into the local language, and the sources are also in different languages, he was difficult to follow. Marie-Madelaine even found the unpublished Manual by which he trained his multinational team of mercenaries. Del Monte faced a problem like that of a modern first division football coach who must make sure the team functions even if the players cannot communicate with each other as they speak a multitude of different languages. Del Monte taught them his system: in Latin, so each mercenary knew what was expected from him. He died on the battlefield as he always fulfilled his contracts one hundred percent. When there was an ideological discussion about the gymnastica bellica of the renaissance in Germany and I asked her what she thought about it, she wrote a piece for us in Germany showing that there is a fundus of renaissance literature on the gymnastica bellica for which you better have the necessary language skills.
After her years at the Sorbonne and her Thèse d’Etat she finally received her full professorship at the University of Lille III in 2000 where she taught for another eleven years. Her doctoral students loved her as she had more time than many and helped them with their problems. She organized many conferences on various aspects of the body and edited the resulting books. This included laughter in the renaissance, but she enjoyed also to laugh with her students who sang renaissance songs at the occasion of the book presentation. At the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, she was honoured by an international Festschrift by her colleagues and friends (Textes au corps: Promenades et musardines sur les terres de Marie-Madeleine Fontaine).
On 15 January 2024, this grande dame of renaissance studies of the body passed away in Paris. The College of Fellows of CESH will always remember this truly European scholar.
Arnd Krüger
Wolfgang DECKER
(1941-2020)
On April 28, 2020, Professor Wolfgang Decker, a historic member of the CESH College of Fellows, passed away at the age of 78. Professor Decker is the author of a vast scientific production, based on a very solid academic background: he had studied sports sciences at the Deutsche Sporthochschule in Cologne, where he would be Professor of sports history from 1976 until his retirement, and also classical studies, archeology and Egyptology at the University of Cologne. He has been the world’s greatest specialist in Egyptian sport, a subject on which he published, in addition to many articles, some fundamental books: his general works Sport und Spiel im Alten Ägypten (Múnich 1987; English translation Yale 1992) and Pharao und Sport (Mainz 2006), the critical compilation of texts Quellentexte zu Sport und Körperkultur im alten Ägypten (St. August 1975) and, in collaboration with Michael Herb, the compilation of iconographic sources with an extensive comment Bildatlas zum Sport im Alten Ägypten. Corpus der bildlichen Quellen zu Leibesübungen, Spiel, Jagd, Tanz und verwandten Themen (Leiden 1994).
He has also been for the last 50 years one of the greatest scholars of ancient Greek sport, a period to which he dedicated, among countless other works, his book Sport in der griechischen Antike. Vom minoischen Wettkampf zu den Olympischen Spielen (Hildesheim 2012, translated into Greek in Athens 2004) and his biographical dictionary of great athletes from the Ancient World Antike Spitzensportler. Athletenbiographien aus dem Alten Orient, Ägypten und Griechenland (Hildesheim 2014). He was also one of the main promoters of the magazine Nikephoros. Zeitschrift für Sport und Kultur im Altertum, of whose bibliographic rapports he dealt with for many years, an essential instrument for all researchers of sport in the ancient world.
During the last stage of his academic production he was also actively engaged in studying the origins of the modern Olympic Games, and specifically the contribution of Greece, since his precise knowledge of the modern Greek language (he was a great polyglot) allowed him direct access to the reading of the original sources; one of the fruits of that work was the book Praeludium Olympicum. Das Memorandum des Jahres 1835 von Innenminister Ioannis Kolettis an König Otto I. von Griechenland über ein Nationalfest mit öffentlichen Spielen nach dem Muster der antiken panhellenischen Agone (Hildesheim 2006).
Wolfgang Decker has been a teacher in the broadest, noblest, and truest sense of the word. To his intelligence and wisdom, he added exceptional human qualities. We are left with his work and we still have the memory of his intelligent and at the same time funny conversation, of his slow speech in any of the several languages he dominated, of his always kind and polite treatment, of his generosity towards his colleagues and disciples, whatever his age and academic rank.
Mario Alighiero MANACORDA
(1914-2013)
La morte di un amico Maestro
Un gravissimo lutto ha colpito il mondo della cultura: il 17 febbraio 2013 è venuto a mancare il professor Mario Alighiero Manacorda, insigne studioso di storia dello sport, oltre che di storia dell’educazione, storia della letteratura e storia del pensiero politico.
Molti di noi lo ricordano, non solo per aver studiato sui suoi libri, per essere stati in qualche modo suoi allievi, ma anche per averlo conosciuto nelle sue numerose presenze a convegni, seminari, incontri di studio, lezioni all’Università ma anche a scuola. Il prof. Manacorda rispondeva, infatti, agli inviti negli Istituti scolastici e andava volentieri a fare lezione in essi. Lo avevo personalmente invitato all’Istituto Magistrale « Caetani » (oggi liceo linguistico e delle scienze umane) di Roma, la mia scuola per più di 20 anni che precedentemente era stata anche la sua. Egli era stato infatti docente alle scuole superiori prima di passare nei ruoli universitari, e in quell’occasione si disse emozionato di tornare tra i banchi della sua scuola.
Quello di Manacorda era un sapere eclettico. Volendosi mantenere nell’ambito di nostra competenza, le sue conoscenze spaziavano dalla storia dell’agonistica antica a quello dello sport contemporaneo, con un incredibile numero di reminiscenze letterarie. Citava a memoria, specie Dante, ma non solo il sommo Poeta. Qualche anno fa, quando gli facemmo visita durante un ricovero al Policlinico Umberto I, lo trovammo alle prese con Dante, con una delle sue tante citazioni, mentre la declamava ai medici. Ci dissero che la citazione più lunga l’aveva fatta in attesa dell’anestesia e che dopo, al suo risveglio, la aveva continuata.
Questa sapienza letteraria lo ha connotato come uno dei maggiori conoscitori di letteratura italiana sportiva. Il fratello Giuliano, di 4 anni più giovane, aveva scritto una poderosa Storia della letteratura italiana, e lui un’altrettanto poderosa Storia dell’educazione, per l’editore Laterza, dove aveva prestato un’attenzione particolare e inusuale all’educazione fisica. Mario Alighiero aveva capito infatti il valore fondamentale del corpo nella formazione dei giovani. Un corpo che va educato e formato rispettando i ritmi della crescita, ma anche permettendo ad esso di svilupparsi con un tempo scolastico al lui dedicato, pari a quello dell’educazione intellettuale. Per questo lo ricorderemo come uno dei fautori della cultura sportiva più convinti del panorama italiano. Convinto non solo per passione, ma anche perché riusciva a concretizzare questa sua ferma consapevolezza riconoscendo centrale nell’educazione del giovane un metodo in cui l’educazione fisica è basilare. Per questo motivo lo invitavamo sempre ai nostri convegni, sapevamo che, dall’alto della sua Accademia, ci avrebbe difesi, avrebbe difeso cioè l’umanesimo delle Scienze motorie, che molti dei suoi colleghi, invece, tendevano a non considerare. Invitato, veniva sempre volentieri, con generosità, non so quanti suoi scritti ci ha consegnato nel tempo, partecipando a diversi convegni del CESH, ma anche agli incontri di studio romani, a volte periferici, senza fare differenze tra di essi. Una volta ci siamo trovati a parlare di valori nello sport in una biblioteca scolastica di Roma, a Tor Tre Teste. Non importava che fosse Università o liceo o periferia, Mario A. Manacorda era sempre disponibile ad intervenire e sempre incantava la platea. Una perdita che ci ha profondamente addolorati. Il suo ricordo resterà in noi come viva testimonianza delle valenze della nostra cultura sportiva.
Angela TEJA
Società Italia di Storia dello Sport (Roma)
John A. LUCAS
(1927-2012)
CESH International Honorary Fellow John Apostal Lucas, Track & Field expert, Olympic Historian and Penn State Professor Emeritus died on 9 November 2012. He was 84. John had three overlapping careers as athlete, coach and researcher/professor.
John Lucas was born in Boston, MA on 24 December 1927. Both parents had immigrated to the US from Albania. His father Apostal Llukka anglicized the name. John graduated from the Boston English High School where he had been a successful runner. As his parents could not afford a college education for their third (of four) sons, John joined the Army in 1945 and was sent to the occupation force in South Korea first as Private, later as Corporal mainly stationed at Yeosu on the Yellow Sea. When he came back he was able to study at Boston University, School of Physical Education for Men, on the basis of the G.I. Bill. He continued to run middle and long distance for his university and received his B.A. on the top of his class in 1951. From here he went on to the University of Southern California (USC), where he was rewarded with an academic scholarship in the School of Physical Education. When the money did not suffice he helped out as stuntman and minor actor in four Hollywood movies, e.g. in Burt Lancaster’s Jim Thorpe—All-American. While at USC he also won the Southern California 10 km championships and placed seventh in the Olympic Trials for the 1952 Games.
Back at the East Coast in August 1952, with a completed M.A. in Physical Education he received a coaching assignment for track and field at the Huntington (Boston) Preparatory School for Boys, winning all 77 competitions in the following six years. After winning the state team championships in 1958 he decided to seek a doctoral program with an opportunity to coach at the college level and accepted a graduate degree opportunity at the University of Maryland. This was interrupted by a four months coaching streak for the Turkish national track team before the Rome Olympics. He led the team to many national records.
At the University of Maryland John studied with Marvin Eyler, the best American sport historian of this age. By 1962 the doctoral dissertation, Baron de Coubertin and the Formative Years of the Modern International Olympic Movement, 1883-1896 was ready. On his way to the Rome Olympics he had worked in the IOC Archives at Mon Repos, guided by Lydia Zanchi, personal secretary to Coubertin a quarter-century earlier. She also helped him to interview Coubertin’s widow in a Geneva retirement home. John was the last sport historian who had spoken to Marie Rothan Coubertin (1860-1964).
After his PhD John started as Head Track Coach at Penn State University (1962-68). After six successful years he took chances to move from the tenured position of coach to the untenured position of Associate Professor (later tenured full professor) of Sport History and Philosophy at Penn State. Together with Ronald A. Smith they converted Penn State to a power house in the study of the history of sport. His teaching was so successful that he was awarded many diplomas of merit for his teaching skills. Long after his official retirement in 1996, John taught one course at Penn State at age 82, remarkable by itself.
John became THE Olympic historian. In 1992, IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, awarded him the title of Official IOC Lecturer in 1996 he received the highest Olympic Order of Merit. John was a frequent lecturer at the IOA in Olympia and many other places around the globe were a positive notion of the Olympic Games was heard.
Over the years he (co)published 8 books and more than 220 learned papers, including Saga of American Sport (Philadelphia, Lea and Febiger, 1978), co-author Ronald A. Smith, The Modern Olympic Games (New York, A. S. Barnes, 1980), and Future of the Olympic Games (Champaign, IL, Human Kinetics, 1992). John was at his best, when he could write on the history of track and field. His biographies of American Olympians, on runners like Nurmi, or the pedestrians in the nineteenth century are among the finest pieces in the history of sport. Although one may argue that his Olympic Philosophy was more influenced by Brundage than by Samaranch, John would always (and rightfully) claim that he was a fan of Coubertin, and that this was his guideline.
John attended several CESH Conferences and was co-opted as 28th (International Honorary) Fellow at Olympia in 2003, the proper place for somebody nicknamed Mr. Olympics at Penn State and elsewhere. Being a runner by heart John made it a point not only to attend every Olympic Games from 1960-2008, but also run at least one lap on the Olympic track. Over all, he ran more than 240,000 km in his life, all recorded in his running diary. Of course, he also ran with us at CESH and other conferences, and although he was older than most of us, he would never give up even on the longest of runs. Far more relevant are his contributions to people all over planet earth whose lives were influenced by a man driven like none other to uphold the ideals of Olympism… the promotion of a stronger humanity and world peace through sport. « I’m a relatively harmless, eccentric schoolteacher, » he called himself in a press interview, for us at CESH he was a good Fellow and a friend.
Since 2010, the John A. Lucas Olympic History Collection (4.5 m3) is housed at the Penn State University Archives. John was married in 1955 to Joyce and the two remained together until her passing in 2010. Since April 2012, John has lived with his son in Columbia, Missouri and will be survived by his son, Mark, granddaughter Katie and grandson, Matt.
Arnd KRÜGER
Georg August University, Göttingen (Germany)
William James RIORDAN
(1936-2012)
The academic world lost an outstanding personality on Saturday, February 11, 2012 with the passing of Dr. Jim Riordan. After a valiant and determined battle fighting cancer, Jim died peacefully with his youngest daughter Catherine by his side. He leaves to grieve an extended family, including children Tanya, Nadine (Sean), Sean (Maya), Nathalie (Bruce), Catherine, grandchildren Marie (Matt) Perry, Chloe, Benedict Sebastian, Giselle, Imogen, Oliver, and great granddaughter Skye; siblings who know him as Bill, sisters Marilyn (Dave), Jennifer (Bob); and numerous cousins, nephews and nieces, Jim was predeceased by his brother Terry.
Jim was born in Portsmouth in 1936, grew up during World War II, and his wartime memories during those impressionable years serve as a backdrop for several novels written for young adults, including The Enemy, 2001; The Prisoner, 1999; and Sweet Clarinet, 1998. Sweet Clarinet was the recipient of the National Association of Special Education Needs (NASEN) Award and runner-up in the Whitbread Awards for the best children’s book of 1998. The Prisoner was nominated for the Carnegie Prize, for the best children/youth book written in 1999.
While Jim was a prolific writer of children’s literature, with more than 60 titles to his credit, academic scholars are most familiar with his equally expansive output of articles and books on contemporary sport. His Sport and Soviet Society: Development of Sport and Physical Education in Russia and the USSR (Cambridge University Press, 1977) remains the definitive English-language account of the development of sport in tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union. Sport and Soviet Society was the publication of Dr. Riordan’s Ph.D. dissertation from the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, England. His undergraduate joint honours degree in Social Science and Russian from Birmingham was the academic start of an impressive scholarly career.
Born into a traditional working class family (his grandfather was a well-respected Portsmouth chimney sweep) Jim left school to work as a postman, barman, crate stacker, railway clerk, and on weekends, as a talented double bass player. It was only with his call-up to complete his obligatory two years of national military service that his linguistic fluency blossomed. During service in the RAF he learned Russian and went on to a prestigious university career as a lecturer in Russian language. Dr. Riordan was equally fluent in French and German with an ability to present at academic conferences in any of his four languages.
Prior to his tenure as a university lecturer, in August 1961, Jim travelled to Moscow where as a member of the British Communist Party, he was enrolled in the Higher Party School for two years. It was this period in Soviet Russia that Jim fell in love with the geography, culture and people of the various republics. In fact, before the collapse of the USSR, Jim had visited every one of the 15 soviet republics, collecting stories, both written and oral. Like his youth war time impressions, this travel led to the authorship of Russian Gypsy Tales, 1986; Tales from Tartary, 1978; Tales From Central Russia, 1976; and The Mistress of the Copper Mountain: Folk Tales from the Urals, 1974.
After completing his studies at the Higher Party School, Jim stayed on in Moscow as a translator at Progress Publishers. He quickly gained the reputation as a highly skilled and competent translator and as a result, was given responsibility for the English-language editions of works written by the Russian elite of literature, such as Ivan Turgenev and his short story Mumu, and Vladimir Odoyevsky’s Old Father Frost. While translation paid the bills, sport was always the subject of choice for Jim, be it as a footballer or badminton player with the Spartak Sports society, a freelance correspondent covering the latest Moscow sports event for the British press, or hours spent in the Lenin Library perusing historical records of the development of organized sport in the county.
He returned to Britain in 1965, first as a lecturer in Russian at Portsmouth Polytechnic and then with the Centre for East European and Russian Studies, University of Birmingham (1968). While at Birmingham, Jim accepted a permanent lectureship at the University of Bradford in 1971. He remained at Bradford, for 18 years, gaining promotion as Professor of Russian Studies. In 1989, Jim returned to the south of England and his beloved Portsmouth, having been appointed Professor and Head of the School of Language and International Studies, University of Surrey. While at Surrey, Dr. Riordan earned a fellowship from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and expanded his workload to include Directorship of the International Sports Studies Centre. He taught at Surrey until his retirement as Emeritus Professor in 2002, but remained academically active with appointments as Honorary Professor in Sport Studies, University of Stirling, Scotland (2003) and Visiting Professor in Sport Studies, University of Worcester (2006).
An accomplished administrator, Jim Riordan was awarded the ISHPES Award in 1999 as a tribute to his lifelong record of research in sport history. Jim held the presidency of the European Committee for Sports History (CESH) from 2003 to 2005 and was the president of CESH’s College of Fellows from 2007 to 2009. In 1992, the Université des Langues et Lettres de Grenoble presented him with the Diplôme de Docteur Honoris Causa. His organizational skills and fluency in Russian led to his appointment as Attaché to the British Olympic Team for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. As prestigious as all these administrative roles were, the highlight of Jim’s administrative career arguably was his tenure as President, Portsmouth Football Club fan club for Pompey is “his team”.
The sports academic community has lost an important member of the fraternity and our collective thoughts and condolences go out to his grieving family and friends.
In bereavement and respectfully submitted,
Professor Emeritus Hart CANTELON
University of Lethbridge, Alberta (Canada)
Horst UEBERHORST
(25 October 1925 – 19 December 2010)
Shortly before Christmas Horst Ueberhorst passed away. He was aged 85 and spent the last years of his life in retirement. Horst one of the original eleven Fellows of the College of Fellows as of Rome 1996.
For the sport historians of the ’70s and ’80s (his last monograph is of 1992) Horst was leading the way of international cooperation. His 7 volume 3737 page world history of physical education and sport (published between 1972 and ’89) covers more than one hundred countries, and he assured that the more than one hundred scholars had a chance to discuss. It helped laying the basis for truly worldwide connections of sport historians and covered some countries for the first time. Although much of his historical writing is dealing with political aspects, he preferred to consider himself a cultural historian. Horst was fluent in English, taught and published in the US (the Library of Congress holds 18 books of him). He could communicate in French and read Latin, but preferred English.
His own work on physical education at the NAPOLA (the Nazi elite schools) is still the standard after 40 years. His research on the worker sports movement made use of the sources available at the time and was leading the way for more research by others later on. His work on sports leaders at the Nazi period showed that he was looking for the people and their functions and actions. In his differentiated viewing of history, he was very modern.
Horst was a physical educator and had a PhD in Modern and Medieval History from the University of Bonn (1953, still aged 27). He had also studied German and Protestant Theology. He taught these four subjects at high school and PE at university, worked with the Minister of Education of his home-state of North Rhine-Westphalia, before he became the founding Dean of the Physical Education Faculty at the newly founded Ruhr-University at Bochum. He brought Gertrud Pfister, his first University Assistant, into university teaching.
Not much more than half of his 29 books deal with sport history. Andreas Luh & Edgar Beckers edited the Festschrift for his 65th birthday which contains a full bibliography until this time. Having grown up in Wattenscheid in the Ruhr area (next to Bochum), he wrote on the social history of his region, but also on the German element in the US labor movement, on the German and the German-American Turners, on von Steuben and other German-US topics, a history of rowing etc. He was one of the few Europeans to be honoured as an International Fellow of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education (as one 1979).
I meet Horst for the first time in a rehabilitation clinic in 1973. He had ruptured his Achilles tendon, demonstrating gymnastics with apparatus to his students then aged 48. I had sent him my manuscript for a series of books he had been editing and he asked me whether I had time to come down to the Black Forest to go over the manuscript with him. I went and then it took me another two years to answer all of his queries and finish my biography on Theodor Lewald in a way he would approve. His enthusiasm for sound scholarship and readability was very impressive and luckily contagious.
German sport historiography is losing a giant on whose shoulders we have been standing, European sport historiography is losing one of the corner stones of international cooperation. CESH has been honouring Horst with Annual Horst-Ueberhorst Honorary Address ever since 1997. Horst was present in Kattowice (Poland) at the 2nd CESH Congress and was very pleased that this series of world renown sport historians was started with George Eisen who had been a student of his when Horst had been guest professor at the University of Maryland. This was Horst’s last international appearance.
We will all miss him.
Prof. Dr. Arnd KRÜGER
Georg-August-University, Göttingen (Germany)
Prof. Dr. Machiko KIMURA
(21 January 1954 – 21 June 2009)
Machiko Kimura (née Mori) was an outstanding scholar of the history and philosophy of physical education. She was a student at Tokyo University of Education (1972-76), followed by her doctoral studies at Tsukuba University (1976 – 81). For this she went to Vienna for two years to work with Margarete Streicher (1891 – 1985), the famous Austrian physical educator. Machiko was Prof. Streicher’s last student and she wrote a biography and late interprÉtation of her work, the Natürliches Turnen. This unusual book demonstrated the skill to use oral as well as written and audio-visual sources and her broad knowledge of the philosophy of movement. Machiko used an historical approach to movement studies and put the work of Streicher and her collaborator Gaulhofer into the research context of her time. Looking also at the reception of the system and Streicher’s own reflection of all of this Machiko used highly successfully a triangulation approach to her sources. Her thesis was guided by Prof. Yuzo Kishino and Prof. Juriro Narita who had been a student in Vienna himself introduced her to Prof. Streicher and showed Machiko the way to sport history.
After her PhD she became professor of physical education at the Nara University of Education. She maintained a close contact to German and Austrian universities, but she was also fluent in English and was highly esteemed by her colleagues. Her main partner for comparative work was Prof. Roth at Heidelberg University with whom she developed a system of ball games. Machiko has published on ethical issues such as doping in sport, taking the historical and the distinct national contexts of the doping scene into consideration. Here her knowlegeable multi-national perspectives show her outstanding knowledge and logical thinking. She served on the highest research boards of the Japanese government and on editorial boards of national and international scientific journals. In 2006 CESH elected her into the College of Fellows.
In 1983 Machiko married Prof. Jiro Kimura (Momoyama Gakuin University), they have a daughter (27) and a son (25). Machiko’s hobby was the writing of traditional Japanese Haiku, miniature poems consisting only of a total of 17 syllables, 5, 7, 5.
“Gyoun no Ikazuchi Todorokishi Wakarekana“. (Machiko)
“Be it a farewell as if there is thunder in a morning cloud.“(Machiko)
In March 2009 Machiko was forced to retire from her university work suffering from chronic nephritis. On June 20, she had to go to the hospital, on the 21 she passed away in the midst of her family with heart failure.
CESH will always remember her as an unusual international scholar who went remarkable and daring methodological ways to find new answers to important research questions.
Kazuhiko KUSUDO
Hiroshima University (Japan)
Marco FITTA’
Marco Fittà, socio fondatore della SISS, è morto nella notte del 30 gennaio a Verona, dopo una lunga e inesorabile malattia. Lo ricordiamo per la sua simpatia e per la creatività che lo contrastingueva, facendone un ricercatore acuto e originale. Suo campo d’azione era il gioco e i giocattoli, specie quelli d’epoca antica. Lascia tutta la sua collezione di giocattoli e un’ampia biblioteca specializzata nel settore al Museo del giocattolo a lui intitolato a Soave. Uno dei suoi ultimi interventi scientifici, tra i più apprezzati anche all’estero, lo leggiamo negli Atti del congresso CESH di Crotone (sui sistemi di assegnazione dei posti di partenza nelle corse antiche attraverso a un gioco di biglie). Alla famiglia tutta le nostre più sentite condoglianze unitamente a quelle della Società Italiana di Storia dello Sport.
Angela Teja
CESH President
Aldo CAPANNI
« Cari amici,
a nome di tutti i soci della SISS voglio esprimere il più profondo cordoglio per la immatura scomparsa del caro Aldo. Tutti noi perdiamo una integerrima figura di studioso, di appassionato di sport, di infaticabile organizzatore culturale. Il prezioso lavoro di Aldo ci ha permesso di superare molti ostacoli e mi porta ad affermare che senza la sua tenacia la SISS non sarebbe nata. Siamo molto vicini agli amici fiorentini che con Aldo hanno partecipato per decenni alla grande avventura dello sport. A tutti loro e ai familiari di Aldo porgo a nome della SISS le più sentite condoglianze. »
Antonio Lombardo
Università di Roma Tor Vergata
« Mi associo al compianto per il caro amico Aldo, infaticabile studioso di sport e della sua storia. Serviranno almeno 3-4 persone per completare il lavoro da lui avviato, come di consueto, su più fronti (ricerche storiche, allestimenti di siti web di sport, organizzazione di musei e di eventi a carattere culturale o tecnico/sportivo etc.) e che il male improvviso non gli ha permesso di completare. Sarà sempre, comunque, insostituibile nei nostri cuori. »
Angela Teja,
CESH President