Workers' Olympics

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Willibald Krain : I. International Workers' Olympia 1925
Pin: 1st International Workers' Olympiad, Frankfurt 1925

International Workers 'Olympiads were major events of the workers' sports movement between the First and Second World Wars. They were organized by the Lucerne Sports International, which in 1928 adopted the official name of the Socialist Workers' Sports International (SASI) .

Venues

Events of this kind took place in 1925 in Frankfurt am Main in the Waldstadion , in 1931 in Vienna in the Prater Stadium and in 1937 in Antwerp in the Olympic Stadium. The fourth Workers' Olympiad planned for Helsinki in 1943 had to be canceled because of the Second World War.

In addition to the summer games, there were also winter games. In 1925 they took place in Schreiberhau in the Giant Mountains . The 1931 Winter Games were held in Mürzzuschlag and Semmering in Austria, the 1937 Winter Games in Janské Lázně in the Czech Republic .

Goal setting

As early as 1913, workers' sports associations had come together at the international level under the name Association socialiste internationale d'Éducation physique. This association, which was barely able to develop activities as a result of the outbreak of World War I, was re-established in Lucerne in 1920. The functionaries and theoreticians of workers' sport accused the Olympic Games , which were revived by Pierre de Coubertin , of primarily serving the competition of nations and thus waging “war by sporting means”. The Workers' Olympiads, on the other hand, were supposed to demonstrate the mental and physical renewal of the workers. For their part, the Workers' Olympiads faced competition from the Communist Spartakiads .

Course of the games

Frankfurt 1925

Football match between Germany and Finland at the 1925 Workers' Olympics: the teams arrive in front of the main stand of the Frankfurt Waldstadtion

3000 active athletes from eleven countries ( Germany , Austria , Switzerland , Czechoslovakia , Poland , Palestine , Latvia , Finland , England , France and Belgium ) took part in the Frankfurt Workers' Olympiad from July 24th to 28th, 1925 without flags or other national ones Badges marched into the new Waldstadion to the sound of the International . There were also representatives of the workers' sports organizations from the Sudetenland and the Free City of Danzig. In addition to the Arbeiter-Turn- und -Sportbund, the Rad- und Kraftfahrerbund Solidarität , with over 300,000 members the largest cycling organization in the world, played a major role in organizing the event. In addition to the competitions in football, water sports and gymnastics, the Workers 'Olympics included a “Day of the Masses”, at which representatives of the various groups of workers' sport presented themselves. Mass free exercises were also part of it. A total of 100,000 worker athletes were probably involved. A total of 450,000 spectators attended this event.

Vienna 1931

“The proletarians of the whole world unite in sport!”;
Parade for the opening of the 1931 Games in Vienna with a banner on the Ringstrasse in front of the Parliament

25,000 athletes took part in the Vienna Games of 1931, which was heavily influenced by class-fighting allegories and mass productions. They took place in the newly built Prater Stadium and the stadium pool . From July 19th to 26th there were competitions in 117 disciplines.

The games began with a "Children's Festival", in which around 30,000 children and young people took part. At the opening ceremony in the Prater Stadium, the regional delegations, some of which numbered over a thousand, marched in individually. Italy, which had been under fascist rule for several years, was also called on, although it had not sent a delegation. Thereupon all flags were lowered in memory of the oppressed Italian labor movement.

In addition to the sporting competitions, there were also cultural events. Its high point was a mass festival with 3,000 athletes, which told the story of the development of the labor movement and the collapse of capitalism. At the end of this performance, a capitalist's head erected in the middle of the stadium collapsed. The game ended with the singing of the Internationale.

The end of the Workers' Olympics was a festival of lights on the evening of July 25th, for which the opera, the parliament and the town hall on the Ringstrasse were illuminated with thousands of light bulbs. The march of no less than 100,000 participants with torches under the motto "For world disarmament and general peace" lasted a full five hours.

As was the case with the first Workers 'Olympics, a film was produced by the Vienna Games that the member associations of the Socialist Workers' Sports International could use for propaganda purposes. Friedrich Adler, General Secretary of the Socialist International, described the Games as "an international army show that is more powerful than anything that the working class has achieved so far".

Antwerp 1937

The 1937 Games were only half the size of the previous events, not least because of the defeat of the German and Austrian labor movement. As part of the popular front strategy, athletes from the Soviet Union also took part for the first time. German and Italian emigrant teams were also there. The Spanish delegation, whose members were enthusiastically welcomed as active fighters against fascism in Belgium, enjoyed the greatest sympathy. When they arrived, a large crowd was waiting in Antwerp train station, shouting "¡no pasarán!" As the athletes stepped out of the train with their fists raised behind the red, yellow and purple flag of the Spanish Republic. The motto of the event was "Against war and dictatorship, for work, freedom and democracy". The Soviet athletes showed outstanding results in most of the disciplines, set three world records and one European record and also won the football tournament by superiority. However, the social democratic workers' athletes were skeptical as to whether the Soviet athletes could still be viewed as amateurs and were alienated when two new players were flown in from the Soviet Union for the football final.

sports

See also

literature

  • Julius Braunthal : Festschrift for the 2nd Workers' Olympiad. Workers 'Association for Sport and Physical Culture in Austria on behalf of the Socialist Workers' Sport International, Vienna 1931, (online)
  • Hans Joachim Teichler , Gerhard Hauk (Hrsg.): Illustrated history of workers' sport. Dietz, Berlin et al. 1987, ISBN 3-8012-0127-9 .
  • Arnd Krüger , James Riordan (Ed.): The Story of Worker Sport. Human Kinetics, Champaign IL et al. 1996, ISBN 0-87322-874-X .
  • André Gounot; Les mouvements sportifs ouvriers en Europe (1893-1939). Dimensions transnationales et déclinaisons locales. Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2016, ISBN 978-2-86820-935-1 .
  • Franz Nitsch: The Olympic “countermovement”. Importance and Legacy of International Workers' Sport and Its Olympics. In: Manfred Blödorn (ed.): Sport and Olympic Games. rororo. Reinbek near Hamburg 1984, pp. 113-137.
  • Hans Joachim Teichler: Serving the idea of peace among the peoples. International Workers' Olympics in Frankfurt am Main (1925), Vienna (1931) and Antwerp (1937). In: Sporthistorische Blätter. (Sportmuseum Berlin) , No. 7-8, 2000, pp. 189-195.
  • Matthias Marschik : "... in the stadium of this century": The 2nd Workers' Olympiad in Vienna 1931. In: Christian Koller with the collaboration of Janina Gruhner (Ed.): Sport as a city event (= city ​​in history. Volume 33). Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-6433-5 , pp. 189-210.
  • Christian Koller: "More powerful than anything that the working class has achieved so far". The 1931 Workers' Olympics in “Red Vienna”. In: Red Review . Volume 84, No. 2, 2006, pp. 41-45, (digitized version) .

Programs and results

Web links

Commons : International Workers' Olympiads  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pinsmuseum: Pins / Lapel Pins: »Workers' Olympics«
  2. ↑ Ralf Beduhn: Solidarity on two wheels. 'The Workers' Cyclists' Association. In: Hans Joachim Teichler, Gerhard Hauk (Hrsg.): Illustrated history of workers' sport . Dietz, Berlin 1987, p. 119.
  3. ^ Gerhard Beier : Labor movement in Hessen. On the history of the Hessian labor movement through one hundred and fifty years (1834–1984). Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-458-14213-4 , pp. 271-275.
  4. ↑ Franz Nitsch: "We experienced how peace can be". The 1st International Workers 'Olympics 1925. In: Hans Joachim Teichler, Gerhard Hauk: Illustrated history of workers' sport. JHW Dietz, Berlin / Bonn 1987, pp. 203-206; B. Schröder: Workers 'sport, forest stadium and workers' Olympics in Frankfurt am Main. In: Archive for Frankfurt's History and Art. No. 57, 1980, pp. 209-218; Andrea Bruns, André Gounot: Critique de société et aspirations réformatrices: l'Olympiade ouvrière de Francfort 1925 face aux Jeux olympiques de Paris 1924. In: André Gounot, Denis Jallat, Benoît Caritey (eds.): Les politiques au stade. Étude comparée des manifestations sportives du XIX e au XXI e siècle. PUR, Rennes 2007, pp. 113-124.