Between Pints and Performances: The Work of George Brosius in the Nineteenth-Century Turner Stronghold of Milwaukee

German immigrants to the United States in the late 1840s faced isolation and a cultural vacuum. Pockets of community could be found in the traditional German turnvereins (gymnastic clubs or societies) that offered the new German immigrants a warm but culturally insulated haven. The work of George Brosius, one of the leading gymnastic instructors in the American turner movement and director of the Turner's Normal School in Milwaukee, rarely discussed in previous research, contributed to the elevation of the German American Turner societies from a bastion of German culture to a prominent part of American physical culture. This will be shown through his contribution as a gymnastics instructor and later director of the American Turner Union's Normal School in Milwaukee and his work as a coach. We aim to solidify the American-born George Brosius's place among the pantheon of nineteenth-century figures of physical culture.