Sports coverage on GDR television

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Notes

See Lawrence A. Wenner (ed.), Media, Sports, and Society (Newbury Park, London and New Delhi, 1989).

Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), Socialist Unity Party: this party was founded by a merge of the communist party (KPD) and some monopolized parts of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on 13 April 1946, thus forming a ‘party of a new type’ that derived its task from the self‐manifested leading role in the organization and development of a socialist society, claiming the exclusive right to govern the GDR. The Zentralkomitee (ZK), Central Committe, the top decision‐making authority of the SED, took decisions which in turn were put into practice by SED cadres heading all state‐run institutions.

Deutscher Turn‐ und Sportbund (DTSB), German Association for Physical Training and Sports, was founded in East Berlin on 27/28 April 1957 as a mass organization supervised by the SED, targeting the sports population in the GDR; it implemented the party decisions regarding the policy on sports.

Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik (GST), Society for Sports and Technique, a pre‐military mass organization that was founded on 7 August 1952 to implement the pre‐military education and training of the youth, in particular the male youth as preparation for the military service.

See Hajo Bernett, Körperkultur und Sport in der DDR (Schorndorf, 1994), p. 141.

See for a close description of this finely‐carved network of a sports/politics complex: Hans‐Joachim Teichler and Klaus Reinartz (eds), Das Leistungssportsystem der DDR in den 80er Jahren und im Prozess der Wende (Schondorf, 1999). For exercising impact on the media refer to Gunter Holzweißig, Massenmedien in der DDR, in Jürgen Wilke (ed.), Mediengeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Bonn, 1999).

See, among other things, the next section and the references quoted.

See Hans‐Jörg Stiehler, Leben ohne Westfernsehen. Studien zur Medienwirkung und Mediennutzung in der Region Dresden in den 80er Jahren (Leipzig, 2001).

See Gunter Holzweißig, Die schärfste Waffe der Partei. Eine Massengeschichte der DDR (Kölny, Weimar and Wien, 2002).

See Andreas Ritter, Die Rolle der den ‘Leistungssport’ betreffenden Politbürobeschlüsse von 1967 bis 1970 für das ‘Leistungssportsystem’ der DDR, Sozial—und Zeitgeschichte des Sports, (1998), pp. 37–56. And: Hans‐Jörg Stiehler and Anja Grieβer, Auf dem Weg nach Sapporo und München 1972—das Sportfernsehen der DDR und der Leistungssportbeschluss von 1969, in Claudia Dittmar and Susanne Vollberg (eds), Das Ende der Langeweile? Programmgeschichte des DDR‐Fernsehens 1968–1974 (Leipzig, 2003), pp. 217–244.

This refers to the two public West German TV channels (ARD: first and third programmes; ZDF: second channel).

See Hans‐Jörg Stiehler and Michael Meyen, ‘Ich glotz TV’. Die audiovisuellen Medien der Bundesrepublik als kulturelle Informationsquellen für die DDR, in Klopfzeichen. Kunst und Kultur der 80er Jahre in Deutschland (Leipzig, 2002), pp. 135–144.

It was particularly for major sporting events that the ‘final reports’ partly included very detailed comparisons of their own program performance and the one of ARD and ZDF.

Rainer Baumann, Anforderungen an Argumentationen und Informationen und ihre Nutzung für die politisch‐ideologische Arbeit im Sport, in Theorie & Praxis der Körperkultur 1980 Beiheft, 1980, p. 85.

Gerhard Pirner, Sportberichterstattung in der DDR (Köln, 1986), p. 74.

Helmut Digel, Sportberichterstattung in der DDR—ein Modell? Leistungssport, 10 (1980), pp. 510–521; here, p. 514.

See Pirner (1986), p. 76.

See Digel (1980), p. 89.

Ibid.

Dieter Voigt and Hans‐Georg Burger, Sportberichterstattung in der DDR, Deutschland Archiv, 10 (1977), pp. 511–533; here p. 529.

Ibid., p. 531.

Ibid., p. 532.

In instructions for sports journalists during major sporting events, one can predominantly find ever recurring evidence for not granting one's own athletes a favorite role, not even if this would have been justified. This approach might be due to media‐internal reasons, since such sports reports should stand out from the Western competition. However, one can also assume media‐external reasons, in the sense that the sports management requested and confirmed the wish to use such a type of treatment of one's own athletes. Yet, there has not been any evidence for this in the archives.

See Digel (1980), p. 514.

Response of Manfred Ewald, President of the DTSB, in an interview during the Olympic Games in Montreal: ‘On Canadian radio, Manfred Ewald responded to the question of a journalist for the pre‐requisites to imitate the GDR‐Olympic success in a laconc way: “You only need to care for establishing the same social situation in Canada as exists in the GDR” ’; quoted from Pirner (1986), p. 80.

See Pirner (1986), p. 86.

Ibid.

Es sollen ‘wirksame Impulse für die Einstellung der Bevölkerung … zur sozialistischen Persönlichkeitsbildung und für die sozialistische Lebensweise und damit für die eigene sportliche Betätigung ausgehen’. Schulze (1977), p. 684.

See Helmut Schulze, Zu Fragen der Wirksamkeit der durch den Rundfunk vermittelten Sportinformationen, Theorie & Praxis der Körperkultur, 25 (1977), pp. 683–689; here 689.

See Digel (1980), p. 89.

See Pirner (1986), p. 92.

Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (FDGB), Free German Trade Union: Marxist–Leninist union, founded in February 1946 with the constitutional right to represent the interests of all workers and employees; it has been involved in the company‐owned sports club movement established after World War II, up to the foundation of the Deutscher Sportausschuss (German Executive Sports Board) in 1948, as a precursor of the DTSB and contributed to the establishment of the GDR sports movement.

See Digel (1980), p. 89.

Kurt Weis, Sport und Religion. Sport als soziale Institution zwischen Zivilreligion, Ersatzreligion und körperlich erlebter Religion, in Jens Winkler and Kurt Weis (eds), Soziologie des Sports. Theorieansätze, Forschungsergebnisse und Forschungsperspektiven (Opladen, 1995), p. 130.

Although this fact is limited to the political instrumentalization of sports, it also offers a chance: unlike other areas, for which the GDR simply declared itself the ‘superior of the system’, this was not required for their own success of athletes, because superiority was self‐evident. It could be read from the number of medals and the rating scale, etc. So it was only necessary to ‘underline’ it (e.g. for the promotion of the young athletes, the role of sports, the commitment of the athlete of the system, etc.). The promotion systems and measures for top‐level sports in the GDR (even including doping) can be interpreted as attempts to ‘schedule’ the demonstration of superiority. Their establishment at the end of the 1960s is probably not only related to the specific foreign policy matters of the GDR or the contests in the countries of the political ‘class enemy’, but also to the development of major sporting events into global ‘media events’ and related international attention and ‘readability’ of success. See Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz, Media Events. The Live Broadcasting of History, Cambridge (London, 1992).

See Knut Hickethier, Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens (Stuttgart and Weimar, 1998).

Owing to the focus of GDR sports coverage on top‐level sports, we can more or less neglect the development of the popular sports sector in this context—still being aware that this sports segment received significant public propagation in order to improve public health, to detect real talents and to build up a performance pyramid. However, in the current sports coverage on TV, this segment played a rather secondary role.

The most important question in this context was: who will be the ‘Head of the Mission’, i.e. who is in charge of the joint German team? The decision on this was reserved for the state that provided the majority of athletes in the team, which was determined throughout German–German qualification contests.

The lead of the sports editorial department was shifted from Horst Birkner to Dieter Potzel, who only continued in the role of the chief editor for two years, to hand over to Ulrich Meier in 1985, who entered the team from the media sector of the DFF.