Joseph Pilates
Joseph Hubertus Pilates, registered at birth as Hubertus Joseph Pilates, was the creator of the physical-mental training method that he called Contrology, and of a series of apparatuses for performing his exercises. Both Contrology and the various methods of physical exercise derived from it are known generically as the Pilates Method, or simply Pilates, today.
Biography
Early life
Joseph Pilates was born on 9 December 1883 in Mönchengladbach. His family was of modest means, his father being a metal worker and locksmith and his mother a factory worker and, after marriage, a housewife. His only exposure to the world of physical exercise within his family was through his father’s participation in sports as a hobby, although he later claimed that his father had been an award-winning athlete and his mother a naturopath. It seems, therefore, that there was no strong family influence that prompted Pilates to become fascinated with the human body and exercise.Although Pilates has been described as a sickly, asthmatic child, this is probably false. The only physical problem that can be confirmed is the loss of his right eye in a schoolyard fight at the age of five.
As a teenager, Pilates first job was as a brewer, an occupation that he would continue until traveling to England in 1914. During this period, Pilates married for the first time, adopting his wife’s son and going on to have two more children with her, the second of whom died at 10 months. His first wife died in November, 1913.
Move to England
According to later statements, in 1914 he went to England to improve his boxing technique and pursue circus work. While it is possible that he was active in boxing, it seems unlikely that he ever worked in a circus. Less than a year after his arrival, with the start of the First World War, he was detained in the city of Blackpool, Lancaster, due to his German nationality, and sent to an internment camp.From there he was transferred, in September of 1915, to Knockaloe Internment Camp, on the Isle of Man, where he remained until the end of the war. The camp functioned like a small city, with trade unions, shops, and cultural and athletic activities. Despite the existence of detailed records of these goings on, Pilates’s name appears only once, as the referee of a boxing match.
Pilates would be repatriated to Germany in March, 1919.
Return to Germany
Just a few months after returning from England, Pilates married for the second time. The new family, consisting of Pilates, his daughter from his previous marriage, his bride Elfrieda, and her daughter, took up residence in Gelsenkirchen.This new era can be divided into two very different periods. Between 1919 and 1923, Pilates lived with his family in Gelsenkirchen. In 1923, he moved by himself to Hamburg, where he lived until immigrating to the United States in 1926.
During the first period, Pilates stopped identifying his profession as “brewer” and started referring to himself as a “physical education teacher” and “Heilkunde,” which could be translated as “natural medicine practitioner.” He ran his own boxing school and was very active as a boxer, trainer, and fight organizer. He was even one of the founders of an amateur boxing organization. According to the available information, he lost more fights than he won.
One notable event in this earlier period is his application, in 1922, for his first patent for an apparatus: the "Fussauflageplatte". This is significant because it is a device that he continued to use for some Contrology exercises, although it is now known as the “Foot Corrector”. This patent represents the first tangible proof that the method was starting to take shape.
In 1923, with his solo move to Hamburg, he gave up boxing and started to teach his method.
According to statements made by Pilates himself, he taught his method in private lessons using his apparatuses, while also giving group exercise and self-defense classes in Hamburg. He also claimed to have been visited by the dancer and dance theorist Rudolf von Laban, who incorporated into his own work some of Pilates’s theories. He supposedly became quite famous, especially among doctors, for the effectiveness of his classes for rehabilitating sick people, and trained the Hamburg police. All of these claims appear to be true, as they are supported by statements by his students, except perhaps the ones about the extent of his fame, which he likely exaggerated.
In 1924 he applied for a patent for the "Körperübungagerät,” which could be translated as “an apparatus for exercising the body.” The most important apparatus in his method, it is known today as the “Universal Reformer”, or simply the Reformer. In this first Reformer patent, he used a system of weights with pulleys to provide resistance, but he also mentions that springs could be used instead.
This Hamburg period served to prepare him for his new life in the United States, where he would go on to fully develop his method.
Immigration to the United States
Pilates first visited the United States in 1925 and stayed there for three months. Given that he traveled first class and declared a considerable sum of money at customs, we can deduce that his time in Hamburg was quite successful. He returned to Hamburg, where he would remain for just three months to prepare for his second and definitive journey.In 1926 he set sail for the United States for a second time, never to return to Germany. On the ship, he met the woman who would become his partner for the rest of his life, Clara Zeuner. Clara suffered from arthritis, and Pilates treated her during the transatlantic crossing to alleviate her pain.
In 1926 they opened a studio for teaching his method in Manhattan, at 939 Eighth Avenue, at the corner of 56th Street. Joseph and Clara also lived in the building.
In the early years, Pilates started to pursue the work he would dedicate himself to more intensively in the following years:
- He continued to perfect the apparatuses he had designed previously and patented new ones. In principle, he hand-built the apparatuses himself, with the help of his brother Clemens Friedrich.
- In addition to anonymous clients, famous people were starting to come to the studio.
- He sought out contacts in different fields with an eye to making his method universal.
- And he started to record the exercises in his method in photographs and films.
The golden years
Countless well-known figures passed through his studio, particularly from the art world. Although a complete list would be very long, we can name a few: choreographers and dancers like Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Hanya Holm and La Argentinita; actors like José Ferrer, Katherine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, and Vivian Leigh; writers like Christopher Isherwood; singers like Risë Stevens; businessmen like Samuel Goldwyn; and fashion designers like Elsa Schiaparelli.
The tremendous gratitude many of his students felt towards Pilates and his method was documented in notes, letters, and dedications. They were grateful for the results they obtained, which in some cases meant being able to continue a professional career they thought finished, freeing themselves from pain that no doctor had been able to eliminate, or avoiding surgeries with unpredictable results.
Between 1942 and 1951, Pilates taught at the Jacob’s Pillow dance festival in Massachusetts. There, he gave group lessons on his method as part of the dancers’ physical training.
In 1934, with the editor Judd Robins, he published Your Health: a Corrective System of Exercising That Revolutionizes the Entire Field of Physical Education. Just 60 pages long and using language that seems old-fashioned to present-day readers, the book explains his life philosophy and his, at the time, revolutionary theories on health, hygiene, and physical exercise. The text is accompanied by photographs of Pilates himself and others that clarify and reinforce these theories. The last chapter even proposes a series of new designs for chairs and beds, prototypes of which he built himself. The titles of its ten chapters gives us an idea of the book’s contents and his thinking: 1) A Grave Situation; 2) Health—a Normal and Natural Condition; 3) Dreadful Conditions; 4) Heading Downward; 5) Common Sense Remedies; 6) “Contrology”; 7) “Balance of Body and Mind”; 8) First Educate the Child!; 9) Proved Facts!; and 10) New Style Beds and Chairs.
In 1945, together with William J. Miller and Judd Robbins, again as editor, he published his second and final book, Return to Life Through Contrology. Following an introduction by Miller, this manual explains the fundamentals of the method and shows, using photographs of himself, then 65 years of age, how to execute 34 basic mat exercises.
The one area where Pilates’s plans failed to pan out was in the universalization his method, despite his best efforts. As we see in his first book, Pilates was very critical of the health of Americans in general and wanted his method to be taught in schools, and for it to be the standard form of exercise. Although his students included doctors who praised his method, when he tried to present it to medical organizations he was ignored. His students speculated that this may have been due to a lack of official medical studies of the method or, possibly, to Pilates’s difficult personality. He had a strong character and was very controlling of his work and determined to ensure that it not be taught incorrectly. This could lead to confrontations with anyone who didn’t accept his conditions. His attempts to gain support for his method from public officials were equally fruitless.