1911: Gymnasts plant Jahn oak tree
This tree has personality, and it looks as if it is aware of it. Reaching far out, its shapely crown marks the point where Gutenbergstraße meets Starkenburgring. The Stileiche is one of Offenbach's protected natural monuments. It has a name, as it should. It is called the Jahn oak. And it had its birthday in 2011, if you can say that about a tree.
Gymnasts from Offenbach planted the tree in 1911. The inscription on a low stone next to its trunk reads: "In memory of the opening of the first German gymnastics ground in the Hasenheide in Berlin in 1811 - June 19 - 1911". The tree planting was preceded by an exhibition gymnastics competition on Bieberer Berg, in which all Offenbach and Bürgel gymnastics clubs took part. In a festive meeting, the clubs then joined together to form the "Offenbach Gymnastics Association" "to safeguard all gymnastics interests".
In their rivalry with the then young movements that are generally referred to as sport today, most gymnasts at the time closely followed the traditions established by the "father of gymnastics" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), the charismatic leader from Hasenheide. Jahn saw the gymnastics movement as more than just physical exercise. For him, gymnastics was also a contribution, firstly to liberation from the Napoleonic yoke and then to the unification of the small and medium-sized German states in a system based on freedom. Gymnastics was a political issue.
The gymnasts saw themselves as patriots. This was to be celebrated once again at the Jahn Oak. On the evening of August 10, 1928, the 150th birthday of the "gymnastics father" Jahn was celebrated there. A second stone remains at the foot of the oak, an erratic block in the shape of a pyramid. Gymnasts from Offenbach had brought it from the Taunus and erected it in memory of the 211 members of their clubs who died in the First World War.
Its unveiling was a celebration that the participants found uplifting. Flags flew. Mayor Granzin spoke. Gustav Dambruch, the chairman of the gymnastics club, gave a speech. The town band played "Die Himmel rühmen des Ewigen Ehre", the gymnastics singers sang; a torchlight procession formed up to march to the TGO hall on Sprendlinger Landstraße, where the celebrations continued.
Today, the boulder tells nothing of all this. The metal plaque in honor of the dead has been gone for years. Where it was attached, the stone shows scars. It would be nothing more than a silent monument to the fleeting nature of every memory if it were not for the green canopy of an oak tree, for which a hundred and two hundred years are not much.
Lothar R. Braun