The ninth Zionist congress, which had taken place in late 1909 / early 1910 in Hamburg, offered a supporting program consisting of a harbor tour, religious services, and a gymnastics exhibition by Jewish athletes at the zoological garden's Ernst-Merck arena, a venue located behind the Dammtor train station.
The gymnastics exhibition attracted a large audience and generated great interest among Hamburg’s Jewish youth to train regularly in a Jewish gymnastics club. Since the existing Jewish gymnastics club, Hamburg Jewish Gymnasts' Association of 1902 Hamburger Jüdische Turnerschaft von 1902 had reservations concerning these potential new members due to their supposed Zionist convictions, a committee chaired by Hamburg philosopher and political economist Ernst Tuch (1872–1922), who had been a longstanding member of Berlin's Jewish sports club Bar Kochba, and Hamburg chemist and businessman Walter Weigert (1883–1952) founded a local chapter of the Berlin Jewish sports club Bar Kochba in Hamburg on March 14, 1910.
B. [probably Hamburg physician and chairman of the local Zionist chapter Max Besser (1877-1941)], The Founding of a New Jewish Gymnastics Club "Bar Kochba" in Hamburg, in: Jüdische Turnzeitung [Jewish Gymnasts' Paper], 3 / 4 (1910), p. 48; 50. (translated by Insa Kummer), edited in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:source-131.en.v1> [December 04, 2024].