From the Eugène Maës swimming school to the Caen Swimmers’ Club: Versatile body and sports education for the benefit of public policies (1919–1943)

In France, from the 1920s to the 1940s, the development and supervision of sporting practices was the responsibility locally of private actors or individual initiatives carried out by public actors in a period that saw the state (Popular Front, Vichy regime) inquire about the question of physical leisure and sport. In Caen, Eugène Maës, an international footballer and publicized hero of the Great War, worked as a private actor to propagate physical and sporting activities in general and water sports in particular. Within his swimming school and the Caen Swimmers’ Club, he promoted body and sports education for young people of both sexes. Provided mainly outdoors, it was based on motor versatility (water sports, physical culture, adventure sports, shooting) and was underpinned by the values of resourcefulness, mutual aid, autonomy, and surpassing oneself. Based on printed and film sources, this study aims to summarize, in a historical context struck by various international crises and tensions, the action and educational motives of a private actor within a swimming school and a sports club promoting versatile body education for the benefit of the community and the defense of the nation.