Adolf Karl Hubert Koch (9 April 1897 in Berlin – 2 July 1970) was a German educationalist and sports teacher. He was the founder of a gymnastics movement named after him and a pioneer of the Freikörperkultur (free body culture) movement in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, which in turn was part of the larger Lebensreform movement.
Schooling and military service in the First World War
Koch's father Karl Koch, was a trained carpenter and firefighter. Koch had a sister a year and a half his junior. The family was Protestant. Koch grew up in what is now Kreuzberg in Berlin. After his school enrollment in 1902, Koch attended a Volksschule from 1903, after which he graduated in 1911. After finishing Volksschule, Koch entered a preparatory school in Kyritz. He broke off this teacher training in 1914 and volunteered for military service in the First World War. In the War service, Koch saw the opportunity to escape the constraints and the strict order of the like boarding school institute. Koch was installed as an army medical soldier. Koch was judged well for his service and decorated with a rather high distinction.
Teacher training, study of pedagogy and medicine
At the end of the First World War, Koch returned to Berlin and resumed teacher training in the spring of 1919, which he completed in autumn 1920 with the first state examination. Besides this training as a public school teacher, he also began studying pedagogy and medicine at the Royal Friedrich Wilhelm University (Königlichen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität). The focus of his studies was the subject of "hygiene", he also attended among other lectures the "physiology of women" by Fritz Albert Lipmann (Nobel Prize 1953), who taught in Berlin until 1931 and to whom Koch kept returning in later lectures.
Until 1919, Koch had no contact with the Freikörperkultur (free body culture). It was only with the subject of hygiene that he began to show interest in naturism. He read Freikörperkultur FKK-journals like Die Schönheit (The Beauty) and attended cabarets that included nude dancing. Here Koch was particularly fascinated by the expressiveness and elegance of the dancers Della de Waal.
Immediately after his teacher training (September 1920) Koch entered school service and became class teacher of the 4th girls' class at a Volksschule in the proletarian section of Berlin-Kreuzberg. Koch tried to immediately realize his reformist ideas of a "new upbringing" and was active in the (Bund Entschiedener Schulreformer) until 1923. This included putting the relationship between mind and body on a new basis. In Koch's opinion, physical education was being neglected by limiting itself to monotonous gymnastics. In addition, there was the lack of personal hygiene, which he complained:
For health reasons, Koch promoted daily body cleaning and dental hygiene, which was not a matter of course at the time. Koch started with small requirements: the daily cleaning of the fingernails. For this purpose, a classmate was chosen as the "cleaning commissioner", who inspected the hands and fingernails of her classmates every day. Dental care was added about a week later. The aim was to encourage the girls to practice basic hygiene every day – with visible success: clean, healthy and happy children.
Development of Koch-gymnastics
In 1921 Koch began gymnastics training at the "School for Physical Education and Movement Education" (Schule für Körpererziehung und Bewegungsbildung) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. At this time, expressive dance, which aims to represent feelings and moods in movements, was just becoming fashionable. In addition, Koch dealt with the sometimes quite different gymnastics methods of Bess Mensendieck, Rudolf Bode, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and the anthroposophical . Koch tended to do the exercises according to Dora Menzler, which, in his opinion, combined the advantages of the different gymnastics systems. For Koch, a successful physical education required the exercises to be done unclothed. Anna Müller-Herrmann and Dora Menzler were enthusiastic about this educational concept and supported Koch. As a schoolteacher, Koch saw nudity as a pedagogical activity that integrated the study of the body and the study of culture to create a kind of athletic intellectual and favoured the integration of all genders.