The Willibald Gebhardt Institute (WGI) is an International Institute of Research and Knowledge Transfer in the fields of Sport and Sport Sciences. It was established as a non-governmental and non-profit institution at the city of Essen (Germany) on May 5th 1992. According to the constitution of the WGI its purpose is to support human tasks and social targets of physical activities including health-related fitness and ethical-morale principles in sport activities. This purpose is linked with a holistic approach of education for a well-rounded individual, particularly for children and adolescents in their main settings of living and development: in families, at schools, within sport clubs in the context of recreational and elite sports.
Karl August Willibald Gebhardt was born on January 17th, 1861 in Berlin and also died there on April 30th, 1921. He was a supporter of modern international Olympic games and founder of the Olympic movement in Germany, even though the modern international Olympic movement is most often only associated with Pierre de Coubertin.
On July 9, the Willibald Gebhardt Institute (WGI), in cooperation with the Department of Education and Culture in Sport at the Institute of Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Münster, hosted a panel discussion on the topic “Skateboarding and the Olympics: Lifestyle or Competitive Sport?” as part of the Olympic Study Day 2026. The panel featured well-known stakeholders from the skateboarding ...
From June 29 to July 1, 2026, the Willibald Gebhardt Institute hosted the CEREPS Summit 2026 at the Franz-Hitze-Haus in Münster, Germany. This event, organized in cooperation with CEREPS—a European ...
Soichi Ichimura (Japan), long-time fellow at the Willibald Gebhardt Institute, has left us forever. The WGI, and Roland Naul in particular, enjoyed a decades-long friendship and connection with Soichi ...
From June 29 to July 1, 2026, the Willibald Gebhardt Institute will host the CEREPS Summit 2026 at the Franz-Hitze-Haus in Münster. This event, in cooperation with CEREPS as a European research network ...