The Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 were picture games. Total television, 1200 broadcast hours, “no run, no jump, no throw that is not broadcast live or filmed,” he wrote Mirror. The TV people captured the excitement of these games – and also the shocking ones after the attack in the Olympic Village. Munich ’72, in its splendor and in its abysses, is still present today because so many image makers were there, the world’s best filmmakers and the world’s best photographers. One of them was Heinz Kluetmeier.
His images survive in the archives. The late summer blue Munich sky. And the golden light that falls into the stadium in the evening. Kluetmeier photographed the sprinter Valeri Borsow in this light, he photographed the gymnast Olga Korbut, known as “The Sparrow of Grodno,” in the Olympic Hall – and he helped make her the face of the Games. And a mustache for the world event: He photographed the swimmer Mark Spitz, whom he knew well, as a triumphant. Perched on the shoulders of his relay colleagues, one of his seven gold medals around his neck. But in Kluetmeier’s close-up – pictures can speak – you can see the fragility and permeability of the series winner Spitz. He raises his victorious fist awkwardly, he doesn’t beam like a dominator. More like a boy enjoying the moment. But it’s also quite happy when the others put him back on safe ground.
The sports photographer Kluetmeier always talked to the organizers of the events to secure an ideal position for his camera; in Munich this was particularly easy for him because he spoke German. He was born in Berlin in 1942 and the family moved to Milwaukee, USA, in 1952. Kluetmeier began taking photographs as a young man; America in the 1960s had enough to offer, and not just in the arenas. Sports photography eventually became Kluetmeier’s domain, and his Olympic story began Sports Illustrated in Munich, after which he accompanied the IOC caravan around the world until 2012. He experimented with remote cameras and preserved the moment when Britain’s Sebastian Coe won gold in the 1,500 meters in Moscow in 1980. His arms stretched out, his face Jesus-like, a man on the borderline between exhaustion and ecstasy. Everyone knows the picture. Kluetmeier captured the sensational Olympic victory of the US ice hockey players in 1980 Miracle on Ice. And later found the appropriate position underwater for observing swimmers.
:Olympic attack in 1972: When the cheerful games turned into a catastrophe (Part 1)
50 years ago the Summer Olympics took place in Munich. They are successful competitions. Until a hostage situation overshadows everything.
In 1972, he was celebrating in the restaurant with Mark Spitz and a few friends when the Black September terrorists set out to destroy the peaceful games in the village. The next morning he grabbed the camera and photographed, among other things, a police officer looking over at the Olympic Village, where everything seems quiet under the late-summer blue Munich sky. But that was an illusion.
Heinz Kluetmeier, photographer and contemporary witness, died on Tuesday. He was 82 years old.
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