Academic literature on the topic 'Olympic Games (11th : 1936 : Berlin, Germany)'

Based on one of Coubertin’s eulogies to Hitler of 8 May 1935, Coubertin’s admiration for Hitler, which has been negated or glossed over by research, is re-examined. A thorough evaluation of the diaries of Carl Diem (Secretary-General of the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games in Berlin 1936) shows Coubertin’s early and consistently positive interest in the “Führer”. Coubertin saw Germany as the “guardian of Olympism” and suggested “the foundation of an institute for the permanent study of the Olympic Games”, to which he bequeathed “his papers and unfinished projects”. As a result, an International Olympic Institute (IOI) was founded in Berlin on 22 April 1938, which received indirect recognition from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by publishing the Olympic Review as its official communication organ. The article concludes with Carl Diem’s attempts to use Coubertin as propaganda for the Third Reich even after his death by emphasising, among other things, “the military nature of his attitude”.

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.

Abstract Throughout the twentieth century, the sport has gained much importance in society and sparked interest from various sectors, including the political. Adolf Hitler used the XI 1936 Summer Olympic Games to show the world the strength of Nazi Germany and its rebirth after the defeat in World War I and the impositions of the Versailles Treaty. However, many of the facts historically reported on the 1936 Olympics are contested. The most famous and mythical case of these Olympic Games, and one of the most famous in the history of sport, relates to events that occurred between the American athlete Jesse Owens and the Nazi Führer. The aim of this work is to try to show, as faithfully as possible, as some important facts occurred during this event (the contest between Owens and Long in the long jump; if Hitler snubbed Owens; etc.) that helped create the “myth” around Owens; and to present reports of the global media coverage, analyzing the perpetuation of these mythical reports in current media. As methodology was conducted an ample bibliographical research: reports taken from newspapers of the time and current, books, scientific papers, master's thesis, documentaries, etc. Without claiming to prove a single fact, it is intended to provide insight to the reader to draw their own conclusions.

The IV Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Ga-Pa) are regarded by researchers as a test stage for the international demonstration of the German Reich’s economic power in relation to the Games of the XI Olympiad in Berlin, which were organized half a year later. Through the Games, Adolf Hitler sought to test all of his resources and means, thereby testing the country’s readiness to host another major sporting event. Despite numerous controversies related to the intense exposition of Nazi politics and anti-Semitism, the Olympic Games were remembered among the international public as a professionally organized event, among others thanks to the modern and extremely functional sports facilities of the time. The aim of this paper is to characterize the Olympic legacy of Ga- Pa, which due to its numerous remnants and nowadays well-maintained historical sports base contributes to the development of sports tourism in Germany. This account is briefl y preceded by an account of the preparation and course of the IV Winter Olympics.

Berliinin vuoden 1936 olympialaiset olivat aikansa massiivisin ja järjestelyiltään erityisen tarkasti harkittu propagandanäytös, jossa esiteltiin ”uutta uljasta Saksaa” urheilua seuraavalle kansainväliselle yleisölle. Yhtäaikaisena tavoitteena oli Saksan kansalaisten ”spirituaalinen mobilisaatio” natsihallinnon hegemonian lujittamiseksi. Analyysimme ytimessä on yhdistetyn propagandan käsite. Arnd Krüger viittaa käsitteellään samanaikaisesti valtion sisä- ja ulkopuolelle suuntautuvaan mediavälitteiseen kokemusten muokkaamiseen ja kielteisten mielikuvien häivyttämiseen myönteisten mielikuvien tieltä.Lähestymme mediateollisuutta ja sen roolia Berliinin olympialaisten kokemuksellisessa tuotannossa kolmesta toisiinsa limittyvästä näkökulmasta. Ensiksikin havainnoimme sitä, millä tavoin media- ja kaupunkitila linkittyivät yhteen olympialaisten organisoinnissa ja esillepanossa. Ennen olympialaisia kaupunkitiloja ehostettiin ja siivottiin rotuopin ja -sorron merkeistä. Propagandististen kaupunkitilojen tuottamiseen osallistettiin aktiivisesti myös paikallisia ihmisiä. Toiseksi kiinnitämme huomiota mediateknologioiden eli lehdistön, radion ja television rooliin megatapahtuman tarinallistamisessa ja intensiivisen kisatunnelman kohottamisessa. Goebbels kuvaili lehdistöä ”suureksi näppäimistöksi, jota hallitus voi soittaa”. Natsipropagandan viestintäteknologioista radio oli erityisen keskeisessä asemassa. Olympialaisten aikana kisojen pääväylän, olympiastadionille johtavan Via Triumphaliksen varrelle sijoitettiin kaiuttimia, joiden kautta olympialaisten tapahtumat levisivät lähiympäristöön ja kokosivat ihmisiä yhteisen kokemuksen äärelle.Kolmanneksi analysoimme Leni Riefenstahlin Olympia-elokuvan tuotantoprosessia, dramaturgisia ratkaisuja ja vastaanottoa. Elokuvassa, jota natsivaltio avokätisesti rahoitti, pyrkimyksenä oli ikuistaa täydelliseksi hiottuja otoksia urheilijoiden kehollisesta kauneudesta, liikkeen estetiikasta ja haltioituneista yleisömassoista. Päätelmissä summaamme mediavälitteistä kokemusten muokkaamista valtiopropagandan kulta-aikana, jolloin urheilusta ja sen megatapahtumista oli tullut koko kansan viihdettä. Berliinin olympialaiset rikkoivat katsojamääräennätyksiä niin tapahtumapaikoilla kuin radion ääressä, ja näin voimistivat natsien valta-asemaa etenkin Saksassa.Nazis advocating friendship between nations – The logics of propaganda in the 1936 Berlin OlympicsAimed at displaying the “brave new Germany” to the attending international sporting community and media audiences in the rest of the world, the 1936 Berlin Olympics constituted an unprecedentedly massive propaganda show, planned and organised with the greatest care. Domestically, a simultaneous goal was the “spiritual mobilisation” of the German people to consolidate the Nazi regime’s hegemony over them. In this article, we apply Arnd Krüger’s concept of concerted propaganda to denote the media-driven shaping of experiences and effacement of unfavourable associations to leverage positive images of the Nazi Germany at domestic and international scales.In particular, we inquire into the media industry’s roles in the production of experiences in the Berlin Olympics from three overlapping perspectives. First, we observe the ways in which cityscapes and mediascapes were entangled in the organising and staging of the 1936 Olympics. In the run-up to the Games, public spaces across Berlin were decorated and scrubbed of the signs of racist Nazi ideology and oppression. The intra-urban propaganda also included encouraging local people to actively participate in the production of a veneer of hospitality. Second, we pay heed to press-, radio- and television-associated technologies in the propagandist narrativization and atmospheric intensification that occurred around the Olympic mega-event. According to Joseph Goebbels, the press is “a great keyboard which the government can play.” Meanwhile, radio was a central instrument in the Nazi’s Olympic propaganda. Along Berlin’s major arterial road during the Olympics, the so-called Via Triumphalis, loudspeakers were perched on lampposts, ensuring that people outside the main venues were also kept abreast of and emotionally captivated by ongoing Olympic events.Third, we analyse the production process, dramaturgic choices, and reception of Leni Riefenstahl’s artistic propaganda documentary Olympia, premiered a year and a half after the Berlin Olympics. Generously sponsored by the Nazi state, Olympia sought to perpetuate perfected shots on the athletes’ bodily beauty, kinetic aesthetics and enthralled spectator masses. In conclusion, we discuss the characteristics of the media-driven production of experiences during the heyday of state propaganda, in a historic context in which sporting mega-events had achieved a status as widely popular entertainment. The Berlin Olympics broke previous spectator and radio-listener records, and strengthened the Nazis’ ideological sway over people in Germany, in particular.

Abstract The African-American sociologist and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) travels to Germany in 1936 for a five-month research stay. In his weekly column in the “Pittsburgh Courier,” he reports on the Olympic Games in Berlin, the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, and vocational training at Siemens. In the last articles, which appeared after he had left the country, he presents his analysis of National Socialist society. He observes life in the totalitarian dictatorship “along the color line,” from a postcolonial perspective. To his own surprise, he finds that he himself experienced no discrimination, while the persecution of the Jews, which cannot be grasped with the category of “skin color,” surpasses in popular cruelty and government policy the racism he himself experienced and criticized in the United States. The essay discusses Du Bois's reports from the German dictatorship on the basis of their first German-language edition and in the context of the debate about anti-Semitism versus colonial racism and “multidirectional memory.”

Abstract On 3 August 1936, Lothar Müthel’s production of Aischylos’ Oresteia premiered as a festive performance at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin. Its audience consisted exclusively of invited guests. Among them the Berliner Zeitung am Mittag (4 August 1936) listed Prime minister Generaloberst Göring and his wife, the ministers of the Reich Dr Frick, Dr Goebbels, Generalfeldmarschall von Blomberg, Freiherr von Neurath, Darré, Schacht, and Schwerin Krosigk, mostly accompanied by their wives. In addition, the members of the International Olympic Committee were present. Moreover, many German as well as foreign dignitaries from politics, cultural life, economics, and sports were among the guests. The president of the Reichsbank, Dr. Schacht, was accompanied by the governor of the Bank of France, Labeyrie.

This chapter discusses how, towards the end of the 1930s, television was shaped to fit into domestic space. Taking into account a variety of events in addition to the radio fairs – the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, the 1937 Exposition Internationale in Paris, the displays at Selfridges and at the Ideal Home Exhibition in London, and RCA’s pavilion at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair – it illustrates how television was projected as a private medium, whose promotion nevertheless relied on public events. Even in national-socialist Germany, where collective viewing rooms were meant to compensate for the absence of commercially available television sets, a prominent public-private venture promoted the launching of a standardized domestic receiver.

Leni Riefenstahl is easily the most successful female director of the earlier twentieth century, as gauged by the size of her audience and the scope of her influence. Despite her lifelong claims of innocence, she has largely been remembered for her culpability as one of Adolf Hitler’s premier image-makers, in films including Triumph of the Will (1935). In this essay, I focus on Olympia, her two-part film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Drawing heavily on neoclassical imagery mixed with overtly modernist camerawork, Olympia masquerades as an apolitical celebration of human beauty and fortitude that claims the Olympic idea for the Youth of the World. Yet the film simultaneously conveys other messages that served the regime; it glorifies Hitler and the Nazi state, which it positions as the true inheritor of the classical ideal. In Olympia, Riefenstahl created a film that accomplished exactly what the state attempted with the Olympic games themselves: to project an image of an international, modern Germany while still symbolically conveying Nazi Germany’s power.