23rd Pennsylvania

Gymnast Zouaves

Companies B and K

Gymnast Zouave Art (by Shaun Grenan) (Click to Enlarge)

Gymnast Zouave Quickstep / Captain Hillebrand on Cover (Click to Enlarge)

Company Cook, Capt. Louis Hillebrand, Sgt William R. Peddle (Click to Enlarge)

Gymnast Zouave E.F.Taylor (Click to Enlarge)

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The Gymast Zouave Quickstep

by Charles P. Dodsworth

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Gymast Zouaves were Two Pre-War Militia Companys from Philadelphia who would muster in as Company B and Company K of the 23rd Pennsylvania Volunteers. They were ran by Louis Hillebrand at his shop on 37 S. 3rd Street in Philadelphia. Gymnast Exercise originated in Germany as a type of physical fitness that would allow the human body to reach it's full potential.The practical purpose is to obtain unity of movement in large masses; the moral purpose is the complete subjection of the will of the soldier in the ranks to the will of his superior officer. The latter is at once subsidiary to the former, and an indispensable condition of it. And unity of movement is only valuable in so far as it combines compactness and flexibility. To keep men together; to have them animated by the same spirit, and make each one of them but the part of a great machine directed by one will, and yet not destroy the individual self-reliance of each one, and his power of adapting himself to circumstances; to permit each man to throw himself body and soul into the fight as if he were fighting on his own hook, and yet to obtain the indispensable results of combination -- this is the great practical problem of discipline. Hillebrand, who was born in Manheim , Germany was a excellent buisnessman in the City and had a Gymnasium where men could learn the "Gymnast Exercise".