This article reconstructs an intellectual micro-history of Austrian-born Anton Max Karl Obholzer's tenure as head of the Department of Physical Education at Stellenbosch University from 1937 to 1939. It situates his efforts to standardise physical education within the broader socio-political context of rising Afrikaner nationalism, poor whiteism, and global fascist ideologies of body and nation. Obholzer, trained in Germany and steeped in the philosophies of figures like Niels Bukh and Karl Gaulhofer, envisioned a nationalised physical education system that could redeem and reshape the Afrikaner volk through disciplined, 'scientifically' developed white youth bodies. Drawing on archival sources, university publications, and Obholzer's own writings, including one of South Africa's first physical education journal and textbook, we show how his proposals fused local anxieties about racial degeneration with international fascist corporeal ideals. While presented as a universal remedy for South African decline, Obholzer's system in fact centred the Afrikaner body as a symbolic and literal vessel for national restoration. We showcase both international commonalities and locally-contoured specificities of the 'body' as metonym for the 'nation' in Obholzer's work. His vision ultimately faltered when he was interned as a suspected Nazi sympathiser at the outbreak of World War II. Nonetheless, we contend that his legacy endured through institutional structures and intellectual lineages that continued to shape physical education in South Africa long after his departure.