A History of Joseph Hubertus Pilates
Joe was born in Monchengladbach, a small town near Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1880. He was a small, sickly child who suffered from asthma, rickets, and rheumatic fever. His father was a prize winning gymnast and his mother was a naturopath. A family physician gave him a discarded anatomy book and as he put it, "I learned every page, every part of the body; I would move each part as I memorized it. As a child, I would lie in the woods for hours, hiding and watching the animals move, how the mother taught the young." He studied both eastern and western forms of exercise including, yoga, Zen, and ancient Greek and Roman regimens. By the time he was 14 he had worked so hard at developing his own physique that he was modeling for anatomy charts.
Two stories are told about how he arrived in England. One version has it that in 1912 he decided to go there as a boxer and another, that by 1914 he had become a star circus performer and toured England with his troupe. In 1914, after WWI broke out he was interned along with other German nationals in a "camp" for enemy aliens in Lancaster. It was here that he began devising his system of original exercises which he named "Contrology". He was transferred to another camp on the Isle of Man where he became a sort of nurse who worked with many internees who suffered from wartime diseases and incarceration. He had been heard to say that he was exhausted from moving his "patients" bodies in order to provide them with physical therapy. It was then he began devising the now famous resistance movements where he rigged their beds with bedsprings and pulleys in order to help them help themselves. In 1918, the influenza epidemic swept the world, killing millions, tens of thousands in England. None of Joe's followers succumbed even though the camps were the hardest hit!
After the war, Joe returned to Germany and began training the Hamburg Military Police in self defense and physical training as well as taking on personal clients. In 1925 he was invited to train the New German Army but because he was not happy with the political direction of Germany he decided to leave permanently. En route to America, it was there that Joe met his future wife, Clara. She was a kindergarten teacher who suffered from arthritis and Joe worked with her on the ship in order to help her decrease her pain. Upon arriving in New York City, they opened a gym on Eighth Ave., in the same building as several dance studios. Choreographers such as George Balanchine and Martha Graham rented studio space near his and their dancers often came to Joe to get "fixed".
From 1939-1951, Joe and Clara went each summer to Jacobs Pillow, a well known dance camp in the Berkshire Mountains. There is film footage of Joe wrestling with Ted Shawn, another well known choreographer. They set up an outdoor stage where the dancers would perform for each other.
Joe said his work was "50 years ahead of it's time". His definition of physical fitness was "the attainment and maintenance of a uniformly developed body with a sound mind fully capable of naturally, easily, and satisfactorily performing our many and varied daily tasks with spontaneously zest and pleasure". He said, "Everything should be smooth, like a cat. The exercises are done lying, sitting, kneeling, etc. to avoid excess strain on the heart and lungs".
In January of 1966 there was a fire in their building. Joe returned to his studio to try to save anything possible and fell through the burnt out floor boards hanging by his hands from a beam for quite some time until he was rescued by firefighters. The assumption is that it was this incident which led to his death in 1967 at the age of 87. Clara, regarded by many as the more superb teacher continued to teach and run the studio until her death 10 years later.