Olympics in divided Berlin? Popular culture and political imagination at the Cold War frontier

Abstract

During the thaw (1963) after the Cuban missile crisis, West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt proposed jointly-hosted Olympics on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Historians have dismissed this initiative as a propaganda stunt. It was not. Belying his reputation for realism, Brandt aimed to use popular culture and non-governmental organisations to ease the Cold War at its most dangerous flashpoint. The ensuing internal and public discourses illuminate how Brandt and his Eastern and Western opponents assessed the risks and rewards of a policy of cultural and political engagement. Amid the doubly-treacherous political terrain, only false starts permitted the architect of German–German détente to trace the boundary between the imaginative and the imaginary.

Acknowledgements

This research was facilitated by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the German Academic Exchange Service. Walter Tröger, former President of the National Olympic Committee for Germany, graciously allowed me to roam through his Committee's unofficial archive in Frankfurt and to copy documents. Manfred Seeger helped me navigate these uncatalogued collections. The perennially generous Hans-Peter Mensing located several published sources. The epigrams are from Tessmer, ‘Thinking’, 53, and Höfer, Der olympische Friede, 191. The author would like to thank Frau Annemarie Bierbrauer and Frau Angelika Fuls for permission to include the two illustrations.

Notes

 [1] The seemingly short time frame for Berlin to assemble a bid (the Games were awarded in October) was not then viewed as prohibitive. Three years later, Munich formalised its bid within two months, and crowned it with success within another four.

 [2] Guttmann, Games (quoting Brundage), 95; Parks, ‘Verbal Gymnastics’; Large, Nazi Games; Mandell, Nazi Olympics; Geyer, Olympische Spiele; Senn, Power.

 [3] Blasius, Olympische Bewegung, 293; Holzweissig, Diplomatie, 73; Prowe, ‘Anfänge’, 276. Balbier, Kalter Krieg, does not mention this episode. Later attempts to procure the Olympics in entirely different contexts – during Soviet perestroika, and after German reunification – have attracted less dismissive notice. See Höfer, Der olympische Friede, 1, 240–41, 286–94; and Large, Berlin, 552–9. Höfer wrongly claims that the first to express publicly the vision of Olympics in divided Berlin was Ronald Reagan.

 [4] Schmidt, Kalter Krieg, 507; Prowe, ‘Making’, 180.

 [5] Geyer, Olympische Spiele, 108. See also Geyer, ‘Kampf.’

 [6] Brundage named Quixote as his favourite novel and kept a statue of the Don in his home. Guttmann, Games, 131.

 [7] See Prowe, ‘Anfänge’; Ash, In Europe's Name; Prowe, ‘Making'; Schmidt, Kalter Krieg; and note 29.

 [8] Brandt, My Life, 4.

 [9] See Balbier, Kalter Krieg, 12–13, 18–19, 28–39, 54–7, 194–6.

[10] Balbier, Kalter Krieg, 40–46, 79, 99; see also Schöbel's fawning coffee-table book, The Four Dimensions of Avery Brundage.

[11] In the Munich basketball fiasco, officials twice restarted play after time had expired, stunning the seemingly victorious Americans and allowing the Soviets to prevail. The Munich Games, which took place while Brandt was Chancellor, especially exemplify the difficulty of distinguishing ideological rivalry and cultural conciliation. The warm reception accorded on German soil to the Summer Olympics’ first symbol-bearing ‘GDR’ team was a demonstration not that West Germans had reconciled themselves to the situation, but rather that they still did not consider East Germans citizens of a foreign country. And while Western hearts were genuinely stolen by the adolescent Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut, her feats also heralded another long-prepared Olympic Eastern front: the battle of the children.

[12] Prowe, ‘Making’, 174, 178–9, 169–70; Daum, Kennedy; Kissinger, Years, 235–45.

[13] Dokumente zum Thema Sport und Politik (Düsseldorf [1961]), DSB, Frankfurt; Holzweissig, Diplomatie, 20 (quoting Brandt); Ash, In Europe's Name, 59–61.

[14] Cary, ‘Wagging’; Granieri, Alliance; Taubman, Khrushchev; Trachtenberg, Peace; Smyser, Yalta.

[15] Brandt, Ordeal; Brandt, My Life (‘crack’: 66); Prowe, ‘Anfänge’; Schmidt, Kalter Krieg; Ash, In Europe's Name.

[16] Details below. Nine years later, facing parliamentary ratification of Brandt's Eastern treaties, Chancellor-candidate Barzel led a dramatic effort to topple Brandt, which fell short by two votes.

[17] Schmidt, ‘Wurzeln’, 530, Kalter Krieg, 458.

[18] E.g., Westfälische Rundschau (SPD), 27 May 1963.

[19] Bundesministerium, DzD IV/9/1, 22–7.

[20] Brandt, Ordeal, 29–30; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside, 247–51; Taubman, Khrushchev, 405, 631; Harrison, Driving, 75, 93–4, 146–9, 169–71, 186, 219–20, 232; Trachtenberg, Peace, 251–71; Cary, ‘Wagging’, 275–6.

[21] Blasius et al., Akten, 90–92; Krone, ‘Aufzeichnungen’, 172–3; ‘Dokumentation … Brandt’, 23 January 1963, in Bundesministerium, DzD IV/9/1, 61–6; Brandt, My Life, 40–43.

[22] Bahr memorandum, 10 July 1962, in Brandt's papers, cited in Ash, In Europe's Name, 63. Desiring to separate Bonn from Washington, Khrushchev reportedly sought Soviet–West German talks over American troops in Berlin and over a border guarantee by hinting, ‘The Wall had been ordered by him, Khrushchev. This order he could also rescind.’

[23] Brandt publicly thought not: Ordeal, 29–30.

[24] Richmond, Cultural Exchange, 221, 72.

[25] Caute, Dancer, 2–6; similarly Hixson, Parting, 233. Despite Caute's sports metaphors, he, Hixson, and Richmond pay almost no attention to sports, whose proliferating historiography remains outside the mainstream of Cold War cultural and diplomatic studies. That sports are a form of cultural prestige and exchange seems hardly news; that sports provided an alternative arena for German–German diplomacy (not just East German image-mongering) seems well-known only among sports historians. By contrast, ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ is a standard part of the larger narrative about the Cold War in Asia: see, e.g., Chen Jian, Mao's China and the Cold War, 257–62.

[26] Quoted in Hixson, Parting, 104, 24, 67, 119, 110.

[27] Brandt, Ordeal, 33, 71, 70, 79, 31, 79, 31.

[28] Further limiting Brandt's post-Leopold options, the Foreign Ministry rejected Brandt's proposal that Berlin officials become Bonn's ‘agents’ in pass negotiations. Schmidt, Kalter Krieg, 505–6.

[29] Whereas Schmidt emphasises continuity (Brandt's post-war search for some form of contact), Prowe emphasises discontinuity (Brandt's post-Wall relaxation of his stricture against any form of recognition for the GDR) – a point whose significance the Olympic initiative would seem to underscore.

[30] Willi Daume to Otto Mayer, 28 November 1962, ‘Gesamtdeutsche Mannschaft 1964’ (GM), National Olympic Committee for Germany, German Sports Federation (NOK-DSB), Frankfurt.

[31] Teichler and Hauk, Arbeitersports; Geyer, Olympische Spiele (quotations: 29, 93); Höfer, Der olympische Friede, 82–3 (‘stageplay’); Senn, Power; Parks, ‘Verbal Gymnastics’.

[32] Willi Daume, ‘Sport und Politik’, 27 March 1963, NOK-DSB, Frankfurt; Balbier, Kalter Krieg, 84–7, 121; Blasius, Olympische Bewegung, 177–89, 205–8.

[33] Reinhold Appel in Stuttgarter Zeitung, 27 April 1966. IOC membership was bestowed on individuals, not governments or states. But the IOC had permitted both the Nazis (1938) and the Soviets (1951) to designate a member.

[34] Mayer to Daume, 19 June 1962, GM, NOK-DSB, Frankfurt.

[35] Daume, ‘Sport und Politik’.

[36] Phone memo and Daume-Brandt exchange, 21, 23 January, 2 February 1963, B Rep 002/12532, Landesarchiv Berlin; Daume to Brundage, 22 January, GM, NOK-DSB Frankfurt.

[37] 23 January 1963, B Rep 002/12532, Landesarchiv Berlin.

[38] In the ice hockey world championships two months later, GDR athletes demonstratively turned their backs when the formerly shared but now contested German flag was raised. Photo in Berliner Morgenpost, 17 March 1963. Two years earlier, the Foreign Office, over Daume's protest, had compelled the West German team to abandon the tournament rather than play the emblem-clad GDR team or risk having to honour its symbols in an awards ceremony: Blasius, Olympische Bewegung, 201–2.

[39] The number was actually two, both of mixed parentage. Daume was an athlete at the 1936 Games. For less sanguine readings of their ideological impact, see note 2.

[40] SKz1 I A 4, ‘Betr.: Olympische Spiele 1968’, undated, and SKz1 I A 4-3267, Kühne to Brandt, ‘Betr.: Olympische Spiele 1968’, 23 August 1963 (timeline/summary of earlier documents), B Rep 002/12532, Landesarchiv Berlin.

[41] Brandt, My Life, 68 (‘impenetrable’); SKz1 I A 4-3267; Schmidt, Kalter Krieg, 481, 511, 514, 519.

[42] Informing Höcherl (19 March), Schütz cleverly minimised the significance of this concession: Even though a bid from the Senate legally represented the entire city, ‘no objections will be raised if an additional bid is forthcoming from the East Berlin authorities’. SKz I A 4-3267.

[43] Sportinformationsdienst, 11 June 1963.

[44] FAZ, 22 May 1963; Die Zeit, 31 May; Westfälische Rundschau, 7 June.

[45] SKz1 I A 4.

[46] Karl-Heinz Maier in Westfälische Rundschau (SPD), 7 June 1963; Barzel transcript, Radio in the American Sector, 7:45 p.m., 1 June, Abteilung Nachrichten, Rundfunkaufnahme, Bundespresseamt Bonn; telegram, Schütz to Brandt, 5 June, with partial text of Barzel's comments, B Rep 002/12532, Landesarchiv Berlin. On 1 August, after further leaks compromised Brandt's Red Cross initiative, Albertz again complained that ‘people on this side of the Wall’ were ‘doing everything they can to use published leaks to destroy every initiative before it can get off the ground’ – a view echoed two weeks later by Brandt himself. Schmidt, Kalter Krieg, 511.

[47] Berliner Morgenpost, Die Welt, Münchener Merkur, 22 May 1963; Lübecker Nachrichten, New York Herald Tribune (European edition), 25 May.

[48] See Cary, ‘Reassessing’. For two observers who grasped this point, see the editorial in Suddeutsche Zeitung, 7 June 1963, and Peter Bender, ‘Der Abbau der Mauer dürfte nicht Voraussetzung, sondern Folge sein’ (‘Taking Down the Wall Might Not Be the Precondition but Rather the Result’), Die Zeit, 31 May 1963. Bender's commentary represents a direct link between the Holy Family's desired understanding of the Olympic initiative and Bahr's Tutzing speech, to which Bender materially contributed.

[49] FAZ, 22 and 30 May 1963; Der Mittag (Düsseldorf), 22 May; see also Rheinische Post, 7 and 11 June.

[50] FAZ and Bild Zeitung, 22 May 1963; names in Sportinformationsdienst, 30 May, and Kölnische Rundschau (CDU), Westfälische Rundschau (SPD), and Suddeutsche Zeitung, 7 June; Brandt's Assembly speech, 3 September, B Rep 002/12532, Landesarchiv Berlin.

[51] Die Welt, 22 May 1963; Herald Tribune, 25 May; Kölnische Rundschau and Westfälische Rundschau, 7 June.

[52] That initiative was aborted by Khrushchev's successors. See Sodaro, Moscow.

[53] See Taubman, Khrushchev, xx, 578–85.

[54] ‘Vorlage an das Politburo’, 7 May 1963, DY30/JIV 2/2A/964, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv (SAPMO), Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BA Berlin).

[55] In reality, this was a goal of Brandt's that Bonn opposed. Full constitutional integration of West Berlin (mirroring the GDR's integration of East Berlin) might have compromised Western insistence on Berlin's continuing four-power status and risked (Bonn feared) the accompanying Allied security guarantees.

[56] Protokoll Nr. 15/63, 14 May 1963, DY30/JIV 2/2A/963, SAPMO, BA Berlin.

[57] Neues Deutschland, 29 May 1963; Sportinformationsdienst, 29 May, 5, 6 June; Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Berliner Morgenpost, and (‘tobacco’) Westfälische Rundschau, 30 May; Frankfurter Rundschau, 30, 31 May; Rheinische Post, FAZ, and Neues Deutschland, 6 June; Mayer to Brandt, 11 June, in ‘Sport und Politik’, NOK-DSB Frankfurt; FAZ, 10 June; Neues Deutschland, 11 June.

[58] Ash, In Europe's Name, 65 (‘heaven’); Deutsches Sportecho and Junge Weihe, 11 June 1963.

[59] ‘Betr.: Vermerk … vom 26.8.1963 zu A 4, “Familienzusammenführung”’, and Brandt, 3 September 1963, B Rep 002/12532, Landesarchiv Berlin. At Brandt's urging, Federal President Heinrich Lübke opened the meeting in Baden-Baden by reiterating Berlin's future Olympic hopes: Spangenberg to Barschewitz, 27 September, idem; Der Tagesspiegel and FAZ, 17 October.

[60] ‘IOC 1.1.64 bis 31.12.65’, NOK-DSB, Frankfurt; Brundage to German Olympic committees, 2 June 1965, DY30/IV A2/18/27, SAPMO, BA Berlin.

[61] Ewald, ‘Information über die Unterredung … am 10.8.1965’, 12 August 1965, DY30/IV A2/18/3, SAPMO, BA Berlin.

[62] For the Olympic Movement's controversy-studded track record in the developing world, see, inter alia, Guttmann, Games; Senn, Power.

[63] ‘Einschätzung des Brundage-Vorschlages und Schlussfolgerungen’ [mid-August, 1965], DY30/IV A2/18/3, SAPMO, BA Berlin.

[64] Stibi to Honecker, 30 August 1965, idem.

[65] Parks, ‘Verbal Gymnastics’, 32; Andrews and Wagg, ‘Introduction’, 3.

[66] This distinction helps account for the different and functionally successful role played by ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ (note 25).

[67] Contrast Prowe, ‘Anfänge’, with Schmidt, Kalter Krieg.

[68] Since East Germany was ‘not a foreign country’, the two states after 1972 exchanged permanent representatives (Bonn's did not report to the Foreign Ministry) rather than ambassadors, and Easterners retained citizenship in the Federal Republic.

[69] Schmidt, Kalter Krieg, 515.

[70] Schmidt, Kalter Krieg, 505.

[71] Prowe, ‘Making’, 178.

[72] See my review of Sarotte, Devil, in Central European History, 38 (2005): 536–9.

[73] And Brandt – for what else did it mean that he credited the Ostpolitik with having spawned democratic reunification?