Turn Verein

Turn Verein was an athletic club and political society founded by German immigrants in Birmingham. The club was part of a national turnverein movement launched by the "forty-eighters", a group of political refugees that fled Germany in 1848. Emil Lesser was one of the founders of the Birmingham chapter.

The Birmingham Turn Verein met at their own Turn Verein Hall in downtown Birmingham. The group also organized the first Birmingham Choral Society.

References

• Harris, Carl V. (1977) Political Power in Birmingham, 1871-1921. Twentieth-Century America Series. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 087049211X