04/08/2024 – 5:22
For the former GDR, victories in world tournaments were about more than just records and medals: they were a way for the regime to project its international image. And to that end, the regime turned doping of athletes into state policy. At the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) football team achieved the unthinkable: a draw against Brazil. And the small country under socialist rule continued to compete with the talented football giant: in the following matches, its players surpassed all expectations, becoming the first German team to win Olympic gold in this sport. To this day, it is the only victory by a German men’s team in this international tournament.
Sportsmen were the pride of East Germany, and were even nicknamed “diplomats in training uniforms,” recalls Jutta Braun, a historian at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary Historical Research in Potsdam (ZZF). The state sponsored them with generous funds, promoted them and pushed them to the limits of human performance.
But then the GDR collapsed, practically overnight: sports associations went bankrupt, many athletes disappeared from the limelight or even became unemployed.
This is not, however, the only reason for the downfall of so many sports heroes. An investigation revealed that the regime systematically doped athletes or forced them to do so. As a result, numerous record-breakers lost their fame, their successes were obscured. Heroes were forgotten, despite – or, precisely because of – their significance to the state.
In its short existence competing as a separate Olympic team, East Germany, a country of 17 million people, accumulated 409 medals at the Summer Games: 153 gold, 128 silver and 162 bronze. And all of this in just five Olympics between 1968 and 1988. If the Winter Games are added, the total medal tally rises to 519. For comparison, Brazil accumulated just over 150 medals in just over 100 years of participation in the Summer Games.
But the dark side of many of these East German victories would only be revealed years later: performance-enhancing substances had catapulted athletes beyond the limits of what was possible.
East-West Rivalry
The Doping-Opfer-Hilfe association, which helps victims of this illegal sporting practice, estimates that, from the mid-1970s onwards, around 15,000 East Germans, many of whom were still minors, were forced to participate in the state doping program.
“In 1974, the government created a national plan in which it decided that all athletes on elite sports teams would receive male sex hormones. This included children from the age of eight and up to the national teams. That was about 15,000 people, none of whom had an alternative. You couldn’t say, ‘I’m not going to do it,’” former athlete Ines Geipel told DW in 2014.
The most dramatic thing about this unmasking of the GDR’s false sporting miracle is that the gold medals meant much more than success in the sector: they were a puzzle piece in a carefully polished and cultivated self-image.
Four years after the end of World War II, the country had split into two states: the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the east, and the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the west. And while the latter shone as an emerging economic power, its smaller sister struggled for international recognition.
“It wasn’t just about metres and seconds, it was about representing the ‘better Germany’,” explains Jutta Braun. Every winner on the podium represented a triumph for socialism; in return, the GDR rewarded its sports champions with money, cars and real estate.
At the 1974 World Cup, held in the West Germany, the two German teams even faced each other. Surprisingly, the GDR won 1–0 in the qualifiers. East Germany triumphed; in the West, the fans jeered their stars.
However, the West German team took advantage of the defeat: spurred on by the fiasco, the team led by Franz Beckenbauer began to play better. Furthermore, thanks to the defeat against the East Germans, the West German team was placed in an easier group, facing Poland, Sweden and Yugoslavia, reached the final and became world champion. The GDR was eliminated, in the group with the Netherlands, Brazil and Argentina.
After doping scandals: are victories valid?
During the existence of the GDR, evidence of doping among several athletes from the country during competitions in the West emerged. Some athletes ended up failing tests, but isolated cases were also common among Western athletes. It was only after the reunification of the two Germanys in 1990 that the scale of the program revealed doping as a state policy in the former East Germany.
In the decades that followed, former athletes sought legal compensation for the side effects that the drugs had on their bodies. In 2016, Doping-Opfer-Hilfe achieved its first success when the German government awarded €10.5 million to athletes in 2016. That same year, the German Parliament passed a new Doping Victims Assistance Act, establishing a €13.65 million fund to provide financial assistance to former athletes.
The state doping in the GDR and the rivalry between the two states explain the lost fame of many of its athletes. The former brilliance of many of the victories has faded. In addition, the culture of remembrance of the reunified Germany is concentrated in the western part.
This is also reflected in the German Sports Hall of Fame. This virtual place dedicated to athletes and personalities from the sector features only a few leading figures from the East. Public opinion is divided when it comes to the former sports legends from the GDR: were they real heroes, or were their victories simply the result of doping?
It is a fact that doping was organized by the state and was an integral part of the East German “sporting miracle”. But it is also a fact that to this day many of the affected athletes swear their innocence and defend their victories, feeling unfairly overlooked and fighting for recognition of their own performance. Medals and records, after all, only tell part of the story of the heroes.
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