The beginnings of the playground movement in Germany can be traced back to a time when the Franco-Prussian war was a very recent memory, and its pioneers were men moved by the same spirit and motives which led Jahn to the Hasenheide sixty years before. In the summer of 1872 Konrad Koch[89] (1846-1911), a teacher in the Gymnasium (higher classical school) Martino-Katharineum in Brunswick, with his colleague, Hermann Corvinus, having in mind their own participation as schoolboys in the outdoor exercises of a Jahn club, began to take pupils on free Wednesday afternoons to St. Leonhardplatz, on the outskirts of the city, to practise a variety of running and ball games. Three years of experience with German games such as _Barlaufen_ (prisoners’ base), _Kaiserball_, etc., revealed to them the need of something more highly organized, and of a sport which might be practised in the winter months. The teacher of gymnastics (_Turnlehrer_) at the _Gymnasium_ was August Hermann (1835-1906), whose wife’s sister conducted a flourishing private boarding school for girls in Brunswick and in its interest spent several months a year in England. Hermann’s own house was a _pension_ which usually contained a number of English boys, and Koch’s father-in-law, Dr. med. Friedrich Reck, had observed with interest in his travels abroad the widespread popularity of active games in Great Britain.[90] At Dr. Reck’s suggestion Hermann therefore procured from England a football, and one day in October, 1874, threw it among the boys on the playground. The history of the Rugby game in Germany dates from this moment. American baseball was introduced in 1875, and English cricket in 1876, as summer games, and the steady increase in the number of players demonstrated the wisdom of the changed program. Saturday afternoon had now been added to Wednesday’s. In the summer of 1878 the games were made an integral factor of the school life. Certain classes were freed from other work on two afternoons a week (Thursday and Friday) in order that the pupils might engage regularly, the two teachers whose time had hitherto been given voluntarily to the task were now relieved from a part of their school duties and formally delegated to this one, Mk. 200 a year was appropriated toward the cost of equipment, and in the spring of 1879 participation in the games was made obligatory for pupils in the lower and middle classes. The rule was extended to cover the upper classes also in 1882. The Gymnasium Martino-Katharineum thus became the first school in Germany to give to active games a place in the curriculum. In 1885 the Realgymnasium and the new Wilhelm-Gymnasium took the same step. Other higher schools in the Duchy followed, and the movement reached the intermediate _Bürgerschulen_ of the city in 1905, and the lower ones in 1908.