Postcards of football stadiums go back more than a hundred years. In France, the stadium owned by the newspaper Le Matin was the subject of cards as early as 1910, when it was flooded by the Seine. In Germany, the inauguration of Deutsches Stadion in 1913, scheduled to host the 1916 Olympic Games, was a particularly popular postcard motif. Although the use of postcards as a means of communication ceased in the inter-war period and postcards as holiday souvenirs have now become a marginal practice, football stadium postcards continue to be published every year, circulated in one way or another, and collected. The history of the stadium postcard has slipped under the radar of researchers. And the contemporary phenomenon, though modest, deserves investigation. Who still publishes stadium postcards? How do they circulate (in shops, online, at flea markets, etc.)? Who is still collecting them, and what is the likely future of this practice?
This article deals with a topic in German-French sports and military history that has been neglected by historians to date: On 5 August 1942, members of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans – Main d’Œuvre Immigrée, FTP-MOI), a subgroup of the communist resistance composed by foreigners, carried out a hand grenade attack on approximately 50 German Luftwaffe soldiers who were undergoing running training at the Jean Bouin Stadium in Paris, among them the soccer internationals Albert Sing and Hans Fiederer. The latter was so seriously injured that one of his legs had to be amputated, abruptly ending his playing career and setting him on the path of a decades-long, immensely successful career as a sports journalist from April 1943 onwards. The article reconstructs the course of the attack, the retaliatory shooting of 88 hostages on 11 August 1942, on Mont Valérien, which the German occupiers declared a ‘punitive measure’, and the execution of the four resistance fighters involved in the attack on 9 March 1943. They came from Romania and were communists who had dedicated themselves to the armed struggle against fascism, wherever they lived: in Romania, Spain, or France. The media, controlled by censorship, remained silent about the attack or spread false reports. In addition, the political context of the soldiers’ sports organized by the German occupiers in Paris and its functions for troop morale and mass entertainment are discussed. Here, the focus is on the famous Paris Soldiers’ Soccer Eleven (Pariser Soldatenelf), which included Fiederer and Sing and numerous other German internationals.
‘He refused to return to his country.’ The escape of soccer players from the People’s Republic of Poland to the Federal Republic of Germany – The migration of Polish athletes before 1945 and after 1989 has already been discussed extensively in research literature. This article deals with another special chapter in the migration of Polish soccer players to Germany under the communist dictatorship. Illegal departures of soccer players from the People’s Republic of Poland were widespread, even if in most cases they received little attention in the mass media, except for the escape of the international Andrzej Rudy in 1988. The examples of sports emigrants presented in this text can be divided into two categories: refugees in the true sense of the word, who left their teams’ training camps abroad, and individuals who travelled to Western countries (or Yugoslavia) after obtaining legal travel permits and then refused to return to their country. The first cases of illegal emigration were recorded as early as the 1950s, and the last ones before the fall of the communist regime in the first months of 1989. Most often, athletes decided to emigrate illegally and settled in West Germany. Family reasons played an important role in such decisions; many refugees were able to prove German roots and therefore had privileged access to German citizenship. The flight intensified in the 1980s, which was related both to the deterioration of the economic situation in Poland and to the liberalization of passport regulations at the end of that decade. Above all, the attitude of the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland towards illegal emigration changed over time. After the 1960s, the monitoring of refugees and their families by the State Security Service was largely discontinued; it was limited to the formal registration of persons ‘who refused to return to their country’.
One of the first lasting official acts of the Reich Sports Leader, Hans von Tschammer und Osten, was the establishment of the Hilfsfonds für den Deutschen Sport in October 1933. This institution, which was renamed Stiftung Deutsche Sporthilfe (German Sports Aid Foundation) in April 1936, has nevertheless not received any attention in sports history research to date. In fact, after 1933, the foundation proved to be one of the most important financing instruments for Reichssportführer (Reich Sports Leader) Hans von Tschammer und Osten. He used the foundation’s infrastructure and funds to build the organisational structures of National Socialist sport. Since this was contrary to the foundation’s statutes, the Reich Sports Leader was at a loss for explanation. The annual reports of the Reichsrechnungshof (Reich Court of Auditors) always pointed out the illegal use of the foundation’s funds. These reports, which sports history researchers have so far ignored, also reveal the precarious financing of Nazi sport in the early years of the Hitler regime. The files offer evidence for the corruption in the area of the Reich Sports Leader. At the same time, they provide an insight into the budget development of the Hohenlychen Sports Clinic, which benefited from foundation funds, particularly after the 1936 Olympic Games, and was increasingly influenced by the Schutzstaffel (SS).
In over 130 years of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) existence, it has had only ten presidents. It was led in unbroken succession by nine men until Kristy Coventry was elected as the first woman in 2025. ‘Founding father’ Pierre de Coubertin conceived that the office, like the IOC headquarters, should rotate according to the same principle as the host city of the Olympic Games. However, the plan failed after the first Olympiad. Since then, the rules for presidential elections have changed numerous times. Sometimes there was talk of a lifetime term, sometimes of ten years. For a long time, it has been limited to eight years with the possibility of re-election. In the early years, it was difficult to find a candidate at all, but the presidency has recently become an issue of power and prestige, including election campaigns and lobbying, just as in politics. Today, this office is one of the most prestigious and coveted positions in the world, but it also poses the highest demands. The president’s duty is, on the one hand, to lead the global Olympic Movement like a head of state, while, on the other, to meet the highest moral standards and maintain absolute independence.
The German Zionist and sports physician Emanuel Simon was one of the central figures for sport in British Mandate Palestine and Israel from the 1920s to the 1950s. In this article, we provide a sketch of his biography and discuss his significance in the diffusion, organisation and administration of sports to Jewish Palestine. We pay particular attention to the role Simon played in the transnational transmission of German sports-medical knowledge and other features of the German sports model. By focusing on this one individual, we show that through Jewish sports, German, Zionist, and Israeli identities could coexist harmoniously. In the process, we confirm the broad gist of previous historiography that has stressed the special relevance of German influences on Jewish sports in Eretz Israel. The article traces Simon’s youth in Berlin, his military service during World War I, his conversion to Zionism, his training as a physician, and his immigration to Palestine. It discusses the crucial roles in physical education he played there from the 1930s until his retirement in 1959: from his work at the Reali School in Haifa and at the Nathan and Lina Strauss Health Center in Jerusalem; to his directorships of the National Committee’s Physical Training Department and the Physical Culture Department in the Ministry of Education and Culture; to his commitment to the 1957 establishment of the Israeli National Institute for Physical Education and Sports, the Wingate Institute which opened in 1957. The article also sheds light on Simon’s relationship to Carl Diem, the doyen of German sports and a preeminent figure in twentieth-century international sports.
Following the example of the Soviet Union, East Germany tried to show the superiority of its system through its sporting successes. The sporting ‘apprentice’ of the 1950s became the model student and by the 1970s a serious sporting competitor. At the beginning of the 1980s East Germany drew level with the Soviet Union and even threatened to overtake her in competitive success. This sporting rivalry climaxed when the Soviet Union endeavoured to become an equal partner in organizing the Friedensfahrt (the cycling race for peace). On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany three cycling events should also be held in Moscow. Instead of the customary three-countries-trip between Warsaw, East-Berlin and Prague, the Soviet Union planned, together with support of the French communists, a trip from Paris to Moscow on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution (something East Germany tried to prevent). As East Germany refused to share its methods of training and doping with the Soviet Union, the latter tried to force the former to consent to doping controls. The article also deals with other sport-political and sporting rivalries between the two states in the 1980s. It comes to conclusion that sport provided one of the few opportunities to defy the big brother without violating political boundaries. This applied to athletes, sport officials as well as to the sporting public.
This article addresses a topic of sports history that has received little attention from researchers: the sport within the Catholic Church in Germany. The study begins with the beginnings of physical education in the Catholic Enlightenment of the 18th century. It then presents the sports practices in Catholic parishes and associations from the 19th century on and analyses the history of the sports association Deutsche Jugendkraft (DJK) and its foundation in 1920. The focus is on the north-west German region and the history of football. Gymnastics and sport were promoted within the Catholic Church in order to realise a comprehensive educational ideal that went beyond intellectual and moral education, taking into account sporting activities, especially for young people. At the same time, Catholic educators were keen to prevent young people from being lost to the secular club system. During the Weimar Republic, the DJK organised its own league system for various sports, cup competitions and international matches against Catholic national teams from neighbouring European countries. Under the Nazi regime, the DJK and the sports groups it organised were gradually dissolved and robbed of their assets and sports grounds. Nevertheless, former officials managed to re-establish the sports umbrella organisation DJK after 1945 and to lead this Catholic sports movement into a new future.
To this day, doping in the Cold War is the subject of both scientific research and public controversy. The authors consider the methods and consequences of pushing the boundaries of competitive sport in East and West Germany. Firstly, the material and personnel build-up in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) sports system is outlined. The article then analyses the unique assessments of GDR doping by the head of sports medicine, Manfred Höppner, and how the actual effects of doping far exceeded these forecasts. Statistics on the performance development of the fictitious all-German men’s and women’s athletics teams strongly suggest that doping was also very common in the men’s field in the West. The article traces the impetus given to doping practices and the doping debate in the West by athletes and sports physicians from the GDR who switched sides. Finally, the authors summarize the findings of recent research into GDR doping. The files of the doping trials in which doctors, officials and trainers were prosecuted in the late 1990s reveal the extent of arbitrariness and deception towards the athletes as well as the tendency towards an aggravation in the administration of doping. In addition, defendants and witnesses admitted in their interrogations the moral failure towards those under their protection. On the basis of the latest research results on performance manipulation in East and West, the differences between doping in democracy and dictatorship are worked out and the concept of ‘forced doping’ is discussed.
How did gymnasiums and stadiums emerge in the 19th century? These two issues, both societal and architectural, were studied, firstly from the perspective of an expansion of military and school gymnastics into the civilian world and, secondly in relation to three concomitant factors: the development of British sports such as football and rugby, cycling and horse racing, and the revival of the Olympics for athletics events. However, there is another common approach that has been little explored. Based on documentary material from the press of the time and theatre programmes, it can be seen that acrobatic gymnastics performances played a driving role in the creation of the first public gymnasiums. Performances bringing together actors and spectators through sports entertainment, encouraged some spectators to take part in this new form of physical culture. This makes these spectacles of strength a ‘missing link’ in explaining the spread of gymnasiums. As gymnastics met new objectives of health and physical beauty, two of Paul Mathevet’s partners became gymnasiarques, Victor Vénitien and Hippolyte Triat. Stadiums became the new theatres of sport. Classical theatres led the way by introducing sports spectacles which varied according to their circular – or semi-circular in the case of theatre-operas – architecture during the first half of the century. Through the actors and the content of the shows of the 1820s and 1830s, such as the Alcides Français of Paul Mathevet’s company with wrestling or the circus arts including equestrian performances, these sports shows in theatres provide a better understanding of the impact of civil gymnasiums among the affluent sections of society who went to the theatre. These spectacles of strength and wrestling thus play a driving role in the development of gymnastics.
The three “Workers’ Olympiads” of the interwar period were not primarily about “sport”. Rather, the ideas and ideals of socialism were to be transferred to the world of sport and, at the same time, the culture of movement was to be integrated into a world on the road to socialism. In view of the enthusiasm, at least among male workers, for supposedly apolitical bourgeois sport and supposedly global Olympism, which competed with the nationalist “Turner”-movement and with constant internal conflicts between workers’ culture and workers’ movement culture, between theoretical claims and the practical adoption of a bourgeois sporting canon, this was an almost impossible undertaking, which was implemented very differently during these three events. The euphoria and hope for the future in Frankfurt (1925) was followed by a defensive mood of “¡No pasarán!” at the third edition planned for 1937 in Barcelona and finally held in Antwerp. The following article focuses on the 2nd Workers’ Olympiad, which was held in Vienna in 1931: It was not only the largest event, but also the one in which the core message of organized workers’ sport, that is, the presentation of the metaphorical ideal of an individual and collective workers’ body, was most clearly realized.
After its premiere at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Handball was no longer part of the Olympic Program after the Second World War. This was due to the handball’s image as a “Nazisport” and its lack of popularity outside of Europe. The members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) were convinced to bring it back by the establishment of the United States Team Handball Association (USTHF) – and even more so by two exhibitions at the 63rd IOC Session in Madrid 1965, in which the two teams involved, host Spain and the Federal Republic Germany, at the request of International Handball Federation, simulated equal strength.
The idea of peace in sport dates back to Pierre de Coubertin and the founding of the Olympic Games in modern times. It has been reaffirmed ever since and can be found in the current version of the Olympic Charter. According to the charter, Olympic sport should contribute to the creation of a “peaceful society”. The article systematically discusses the specific concept of peace in (Olympic) sport and also analyses the changes it has undergone historically. The specificity of the concept of peace in Olympic sport is that it is based on strength and competition. The agonistic nature of sport is the basis for peace and fairness. Peace in and through sport is only possible in freedom.
With the exception of Brazil’s football star Pelé, probably no nation has been more identified with an athlete than little Finland, which produced the “Flying Finn” Paavo Nurmi. 100 years ago, he won five gold medals at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Subsequently, monuments were erected in his honour, and the German sculptress Renée Sintenis dedicated a statuette to him. His picture adorns Finnish banknotes, coins, and stamps. A Berlin primary school and an asteroid bear his name, and streets were named after him. A gelding called “Nurmi” was the Olympic champion in the Three-Day Event (Military). What was the secret of this taciturn athlete, who gave virtually no interviews, but who was able to enthral the North American continent with his performances? What characterised Finnish sport, which, with its extraordinary Olympic successes, was also utilised by politicians for foreign policy and economic interests?
Hippolyte Triat’s floor method has remained famous in the history of gymnastics. We see it appear in the title of the booklet written by Nicolas Dally to present the Parisian Gymnasium launched with Triat in 1847: Milonian Society for the exploitation of gymnastics “according to the method of Mr. Triat of Nîmes”. But what is the genesis of this method, the shaping of which probably began when Triat settled down with the opening of its first gymnasium in Liège in 1838? And what was its diffusion before falling into oblivion? It seems to be linked to the progress of its author from his performances of acrobatic gymnastics with Paul Mathevet during the 1830s. Starting from documentary material from the press of the time and helped by recent historiography relating to the sport and physical activity from a social perspective, the spectacle of acrobatic gymnastics played a driving role in the creation of the first civilian gymnasiums. The practice of gymnastics then responds to new objectives of health, educational value and bodily beauty. This study shows how the Triat method was disseminated by several articles by the writer Paul Féval and partially illustrated by Dr. Jules Massé in La Santé universelle: Guide médical des familles in 1853–54, then transmitted after his death by his students like A. Personne who still practised it in 1917 and had it stenographed by Victrix of the sports newspaper L’Auto, and by his disciples like Edmond Desbonnet who often referred to in his journal La Culture physique or in his works. This stenography not having been published, from the descriptions contained in L’Education Introduite dans les Masses par la Régénération de l’Homme by A. Personne, published by Dubreuil in Paris in 1905, and the Traité de gymnastique d’application by Pierre Schmitz, published in Liège in 1871, compared to the articles of Jules Massé, our problem is to reconstruct in theory the chronology of the exercises of this forgotten Triat floor method, in the hope that gymnastics instructors put it into practice with a tutorial recording promoting its dissemination.
The article begins with Germany’s exclusion from the Olympic Games 1920 in Antwerp and 1924 in Paris. Whereas sports relations between Germany and France slowly returned to normal in bourgeois sports, French workers’ sportsmen already in 1922 visited the festival of the workers’ sport federation in Leipzig. After these preliminary remarks the article focuses on the National Socialist era. From 1933 to 1939 France was Germany’s most favoured sport partner. The German Reich used the Olympic Games of 1936 to present itself as a peace-loving country. However, as the occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland on March 7, 1936 shows – between the Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (February 6–16) and the Summer Olympics in Berlin (August 1–16) – this was only camouflage. The article enlarges on the initially very positive, but in the end exceedingly critical French press coverage of the Olympic Games in Berlin. The harsh criticism of the “jeux défigurés” provoked the well-known reply by Coubertin, who expressed himself positively about the “Berlin Games illuminated by Hitlerist strength and discipline”. The German-French skiing leisure activities 1938, organized by the Hitlerjugend (HJ), were exploited by the propaganda as a symbol of common understanding. The gestures of understanding culminated in a joint cultural conference in Baden-Baden, where for the first time a bust of Coubertin was set up. In spite of the violation of the Munich Agreement and the occupation of Prague by German troops, several French sports associations came to athletic competitions to Germany in summer 1939. The article ends with the Reichssportführer’s futile attempts to continue sports relations with France during war time.
Franco-German relations in car racing in the period after World War II have so far been in academic obscurity. Little is known about the resumption of sporting contacts in that field. This article therefore aims to explore some of the routes of the history of French-West German relations in this sport for the first post-war decade (1945–55). The focus is on – in chronological order – the resumption of car racings in both countries, the first appearance of German drivers and brands at racing events in France, personal continuities, and cross-border contacts in this discipline as well as the 1955 Le Mans disaster. Like football, car racing can also be described as a symbol for diplomatic relations between France and the Federal Republic of Germany. The political and social conditions of the time were clearly reflected in this context. For example, the resumption of sporting contacts after 1945 also took place more quickly here than after the First World War. However, motorsport in general and car racing in particular had a somewhat exceptional status – especially regarding its systematic promotion in the French occupation zone as well as their very present international character.
Comparing football and its fan culture to religion has become a common trope in the last decades in newspapers, sports magazines, and scientific papers. The colorful stagings of fans, their often unruly behavior, and their display of passion resemble religious rituals and creeds. Thus, the analogy seems to explain actions that otherwise might appear strange if not irrational from the outside. However, as I will argue, attempts to analyze football as a religion tend to overlook that the concept of religion itself has undergone many permutations in the last centuries. Once, religion was a category reserved for Christianity. However, with colonialism, sociologists, scholars of religion, and cultural anthropologists began to subsume many creeds and rituals outside Europe under the category of religion. In a similar fashion, religion has helped social scientists come to terms with football fans as untypical modern subjects. Fans are loud and unruly, but when social scientists analyze their actions and social codes through the prism of religion, they suddenly appear less puzzling. However, with that in mind, I will ask whether analyzing football as religion might signify further changes in understanding the latter instead of offering an apt tool for understanding the former. In postmodern fashion, even football can be interpreted as religion, which may tell us more about religion’s broadening semantics than football’s sacralization.
The German Turnfest 1923 in Munich in July was the largest mass event of the year. And in Munich, the NSDAP under the leadership of Adolf Hitler had gained enormously in popularity since January. It constantly gained new members and increasingly influenced politics. Consequently, Hitler wondered how he could use the Turnfest to generate even more attention for his party throughout the Reich. After originally having planned to disrupt the event, the party decided, following Hitler’s instructions, to use the Turnfest for its own propaganda. The aim was to present the NSDAP as a strong national political power. But police largely blocked this plan. Hitler did not allow the conflict to escalate and refrained from further provocation, which proves that his legal course to power was already in action then and not just after the failed so called Beer Hall Putsch in November of the same year. The clashes between the police and Hitler’s followers did not go unnoticed by the public. Hitler received nationwide attention, but not in the way he had hoped. He nevertheless continued to mobilize his supporters knowing that his movement was still not strong enough to stand up to state power. He knew that he needed the support of the Landespolizei and the Reichswehr in order to succeed and in the following months tried to convince these armed force of the Republic to support him.
Alpine skiing played a central role in the nation-building process of the Second Austrian Republic. To this day skiing in Austria is a national affair of the highest rank. In post-war-narratives, celebrated stars became untouchable. They served as national heroes and role models for the tourism industry and media. Sport officials and state politicians made it their task to present skiing as the national sport and to emphasize Austria’s hegemonic role in it. In the wake of this operetta-like depiction, myths and male-dominated heroic stories have inscribed themselves in the seemingly innocent white of the snow. In this way, the illusion of a snow-covered idyllic parallel world has been powerfully feeding the “ski nation” Austria for decades – a nation with lost memory. The analysis focuses on the National Socialist legacy in Austrian skiing in the post-war-years and describes how mostly male athletes and sport officials used the victim myth to wash themselves clean. This article shows how the National Socialist past was repressed and reinterpreted.
