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Third Czechoslovak Republic. Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovak sporting insignia. Insignia of the XI Sokol meeting in Prague, 1948. Manufactured by Mincovna, Kremnica.
The Sokol movement is a sports movement of Czech origin. Initially associated with gymnastics, it eventually surpassed the realm of sport.
Its origins must be traced back to Prague, where it was founded in 1862 by Miroslav Tyrš and Jindřich Fügner with the basic goal of establishing a sports center, a gymnasium. However, readings, discussions, and other activities were also incorporated, which were considered important for people concerned with their physical fitness. The movement excluded no one, including women, and spread to other regions far from Prague.
The movement spread across all regions populated by Slavic cultures, most of which were part of the Austro-Hungarian or Russian Empire, such as present-day Slovakia, the traditional territories of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Poland (Sokół), Macedonia, Ukraine, or Belarus. In many of these nations, the organization also served as an early precursor to scouting movements.
The idea of physical training and establishing sports centers for it was nothing new. The Sokol movement is very similar to the physical education of athletes and warriors of Ancient Greece. Germany also influenced this movement with its societies that promoted gymnastics for the entire population, the German Turnverein societies, mass gymnastics societies with a nationalist mindset founded by Friedrich Ludwig Jahn in 1811.
Miroslav Tyrš, the founder of the first Sokol in Prague in 1862, had a significant influence on the movement until his death in 1884. Born into a German family with the German name Friedrich Emanuel Tirsch in 1834, Tyrš grew up under the influence of Romantic nationalism, which led to the uprisings that spread across Europe in 1848. He was educated at the University of Prague and completed his philosophy studies. In the 1860s, he began to commit to Czech nationalism and changed his name to one that appeared more Slavic. After being unable to obtain an academic position, Tyrš combined his experience working as a therapeutic gymnastics instructor with the nationalist ideologies to which he had been exposed in Prague, consequently establishing the first Sokol club.
The Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia, Československá socialistická republika, dissolved the Sokol in 1956, and the government gathered athletes under the Czechoslovak Union of Physical Education and Sport.
