Handball
History
Team handball has
origins reaching as far back as the antiquity:
urania in ancient
Greece, harpaston in ancient Rome,
fangballspiel in medieval Germany, etc.
There are also records of handball-like games in medieval France, and
among the Inuit
on Greenland,
in the Middle
Ages. By the 19th century, there existed similar games of
handball from Denmark,
hazena in Bohemia
and Slovakia,
gandbol in Ukraine,
torball in Germany,
as well as versions in Ireland and Uruguay.
The team handball
game as we know it today was formed by the end of the 19th century
in northern Europe,
primarily Denmark,Germany and Sweden. The
Dane Holger Nielsen drew up rules for a handball game
(håndbold)
in 1898
(and published them in 1906), and
R.N. Ernst did something similar in 1897.
 Click on picture for video.
The first set of
team handball rules was published on October 29, 1917 by Max
Heiser, Karl Schelenz and Erich Konigh from
Germany.
After 1919
these rules were further improved by Karl Schelenz. The first
international games were played under these rules, between
Germany and
Belgium for men in 1925 and
Germany and
Austria
for women in 1930.
In1926, the
Congress of the International Amateur Athletics Federation nominated a
committee to draw up international rules for field handball. The
International Amateur Handball Federation was formed in 1928. The
International Handball Federation was formed later in 1946
Men's field
handball was played at the 1936 Summer Olympics
in Berlin
at the special request of Adolf Hitler.
It was removed from the list of sports, to return as team handball in 1972 for the 1972 Summer Olympics
in Munich.
Women's team handball was added as an Olympic discipline in 1976, at the 1976 Summer Olympics.
The International
Handball Federation has organized Men's World Championships in 1938,
and then every two, three or sometimes four years since the World War II.
The Women's World Championships have been played since 1957. The IHF
also organizes Women's and Men's Junior World Championships.
The IHF reports
to have 150 member federations representing approximately 800,000 teams
and more than nearly 19 million sportsmen and women.
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