Christian Bjelke-Petersen

Hans Christian Bjelke-Petersen (14 April 1872 – 23 May 1964) was a Danish-Australian proponent of physical culture. He established one of Australia's first chains of physical fitness institutes.

Early life Bjelke-Petersen was born in Copenhagen on 14 April 1872. He was the son of Caroline Vilhelmine (née Hansen) and Georg Peter Bjelke-Petersen; his father was a gardener and builder.

Bjelke-Petersen was initially home-schooled and later attended schools in Copenhagen and in Dresden, Germany. He trained as a schoolteacher, graduating from a training college in Copenhagen in 1890. After a period in London, he and his family immigrated to Australia in 1891, arriving in Tasmania aboard SS Doric. He subsequently worked as a schoolteacher, teaching gymnastics, foot drill, geography and science at The Friends' School, Hobart, and gymnastics and German at The Hutchins School. He was naturalised as a British subject in 1894. He concluded that "the bright pupil has fewest physical irregularities of growth, the dull pupils score slightly higher, while the criminal boys are leading by a long way [...] these lines indicate that the normal boy is likely to be the best boy morally".

Bjelke-Petersen moved to Sydney in 1906 and with his brother Harald established a physical training institute, the Bjelke-Petersen School of Physical Culture. Another institute was opened in Melbourne in 1909 and their business grew substantially after World War I.

In 1923, Bjelke-Petersen and his brother sold their Melbourne business to Percy Pearce, where it became known as the Pearce Bjelke-Petersen Institute. They subsequently concentrated on their Sydney gymnasium on Elizabeth Street, and in the same year he claimed to have given instruction to more than 5,000 students in Sydney across nearly 100 schools. Their premises expanded to include "squash and basketball courts, [...] departments for remedial exercises, orthopaedic massage and electrical treatment". and had no children. His nephew Joh Bjelke-Petersen became premier of Queensland.

Bjelke-Petersen died on 23 May 1964 in Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania, aged 92. In the 1980s, his widow asserted that the couple had been engaged as Australian spies in Europe in the mid-1930s, making use of Bjelke-Petersen's German language skills and "observing political developments, speaking to people in authority, concluding that war was, indeed, coming and reporting to the Australian authorities".