The technical director of the Normal School during all these years in Milwaukee was George Brosius, who becomes therefore the most important single figure in the earlier history of _Turnvereine_ of the German type in America. His father was born in Hesse-Darmstadt in 1815 and his mother near Leipsic in 1818, but both came to this country with their parents in the early thirties, and settled in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Here they met and married, and here the boy was born, September 9, 1839. In 1842 the family moved to Milwaukee, which was thenceforward to be his home except for a few brief intervals. He was educated first in the public schools and afterwards in the Engelmann School, now known as the German-English Academy. Eduard Schulz, a political fugitive from Berlin, was conducting a private gymnasium in the city, and this the boy attended. When the _Turnverein_ “Milwaukee” opened its classes for children in 1854 he joined one of them, becoming a junior member (_Zögling_) of the society soon after and entering into full membership in 1858. Already he had developed such great ability as a gymnast that he was able to win the first prize for juniors at the _Turnfest_ of the Western societies held in Milwaukee in 1857. In that year he was also admitted to the militia company commanded by his father. After the latter’s death (1859) he moved to St. Louis, and was following there the trade of painter and decorator at the outbreak of the Civil War. Although married only a few months before, he immediately returned to Milwaukee, enlisted as a volunteer for the three-year term, and was made sergeant in Company E of the Ninth Wisconsin Regiment, later receiving a commission as second lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers. [Illustration: FIG. 81.—George Brosius (1839-1920).]