Olympic Village (Berlin)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Food House of Nations”, 1936

The former Olympic village of Berlin for the 1936 Summer Olympics is located in the Brandenburg Elstal . Today's part of the municipality of Wustermark is located 18 kilometers west of the Berlin Olympic Stadium .

Naming

Sketch of the Berlin Olympic Village in 1936

The accommodations were given the name “ Dorf des Friedens” by the Nazi party , and at the same time the plan was to create “the most beautiful barracks in the world”. However, it was already clear at the beginning of the planning that the Wehrmacht should use the facilities after the Olympic Games ; right next door was the Döberitz military training area . Thus, the athletes' village was part of the covert Nazi armament from the start. The houses were massively built for their later purpose.

Outline of the plant

The pond in the Olympic Village, 1939

The Olympic Village was planned by the brothers Werner and Walter March and built between 1934 and 1936 in the area of ​​today's municipality of Wustermark ( Elstal district , 18 kilometers west of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin ). During the Games, around 3,600 male athletes lived here with supervisors and staff, while the around 330 female participants were accommodated in accommodations on the premises of the German Sports Forum, which is directly adjacent to the Olympic Stadium . Each house was given the name of a German city, for example the dining house of the nations was called Haus Berlin . The buildings should correspond to an arrangement like on a map of Germany. There was a brochure in the common room of the athletes' accommodation. The Olympic Village welcomes its guests . The artistic design (including murals) was carried out by Johann Vincenz Cissarz , Hugo Bäppler, Albert Windisch and Franz Karl Delavilla , who later received the "Olympic medal" for this.

The village consisted of a reception building, 136 single-storey and five two-storey residential buildings, a large dining house, a kitchen house, the Hindenburg house, the commandant's house, a sports hall, a swimming pool, a sauna, and a doctor's and hospital. The dining house House of Nations consisted of 38 dining rooms, each of which was used by a nation for eating and socializing. It was planned in such a way that the Olympic Stadium could be seen from the top of the three terraced floors. There were entertainment events in the Hindenburghaus.

It was the middle of the Olympic Village a Thing -Platz - true to the Nazi Thing movement - created. After a British newspaper complained during the Olympic Games that the idyll was missing the storks , the Nazi organizers had the birds caught in the Berlin zoo and brought them to the village pond. The guarded facility was also fenced in during the Summer Olympics. Strict regulations governed entry, which was forbidden for women, for example.

During the Olympics

Spyridon Louis (center, in national costume) visiting the Olympic Games, July 30, 1936
Rudolf Heß (center) visits the Olympic Village in 1936 with adjutants, on the left Wolfgang Fürstner , Commander of the Olympic Village

The majority of the male Olympians resided in the Olympic Village. It should be a place of rest to which the athletes could retreat. At the same time, it enabled inexpensive accommodation and meals for the athletes and offered them training opportunities and an entertainment program. To ensure peace and quiet, it was guarded around the clock by the Gestapo . a. ensured complete mail censorship and reported in the daily reports to the organizing committee of the games about the Berlin prostitutes as well as about their racial disgrace with Afro-American athletes.

The evening entertainment program, which was organized by the management of the Nazi cultural community, took place in the Hindenburghaus. This included reports on the Olympic Games, weekly film shows, feature films, sports films, cabaret, concerts, ballet and cultural films. In the evening there were also film screenings in the large hall of the house. The athletes also got to see a film entitled The Reconstruction of the German Army , which led to protests. In the building there is still a huge relief by the artist Walther von Ruckteschell , which shows marching soldiers with steel helmets and shouldered rifles and bears the inscription: "May the Wehrmacht always go its way powerfully and with honor as a guarantor of a strong German future." Athletes, who moved into their Olympic quarters here, passed the slogan carved in reddish stone - they wanted to enjoy the evening entertainment with a stage program.

Medical, medical and hygienic organization
While Leonardo Conti was responsible for organizing the medical care of visitors and athletes at the competition and practice sites of the Olympic Games , the Wehrmacht was responsible for the organization of the medical and medical services in the Olympic Village. General doctor Heinz Ziaja was entrusted with the overall management of hygiene and general medical care there .

After the Olympics

From 1934 to 1936, Wolfgang Fürstner was the first commandant of the sports quarters, responsible for the construction operations under the direction of the Wehrmacht. On May 27, 1936, he was replaced by Werner von Gilsa due to alleged weak leadership , but Fürstner remained deputy commandant. According to the National Socialist diction, Fürstner was considered a “quarter Jew” because he had a Jewish grandfather, albeit a baptized one. He committed suicide three days after the Summer Olympics ended. Before that he had been awarded the Olympic Medal of Honor, 1st class . Since no farewell letter has survived, one can only speculate about the motive: a possible dismissal from military service that Fürstner feared because of the lack of Aryan proof , the criticism of his work by senior officials, or the alleged divorce plans of his wife Leonie (née von Schlick) . In order to avoid international attention, the death was portrayed as an accident.

After the Olympic Games, an infantry school and an infantry training regiment were housed on the site . The Dining House of Nations housed a military hospital called the Olympic Hospital . This future use had already been taken into account in the design of the building: Large terraces were created on the second and third floors, onto which the sick and their beds could be pushed.

After the end of the Second World War , the Soviet army moved into the area and used it until it withdrew in 1992. Among other things, the SASK Elstal had its headquarters here, where Soviet competitive athletes could train during their military service in Germany. The SASK Elstal occasionally took part in sporting events in the GDR , such as tournaments and sports festivals, but not in championships and point games.

The Olympic Village today

The largest, more or less preserved buildings on the site are the House of Nations , the former swimming pool and some crew quarters. The gym is in good condition. The swimming pool was badly damaged by arson in 1993 and the exterior was reconstructed in 2011. In the course of the territorial reform in the 1990s, the area was slammed under the protest of the Dallgow-Döberitz municipal council of the neighboring municipality of Elstal , which in turn was incorporated into Wustermark in 2002.

The Olympic Village is under monument protection and can be visited with an expert guide, but with advance notice and with tickets against payment in advance. The DKB Foundation for Social Engagement had acquired the historic Olympic Village and until 2016 looked after the preservation of the remaining buildings that were not maintained due to military use in the post-war period . Among other things, team accommodation was set up by the DKB Foundation as the "Jesse Owens House", named after the American athlete Jesse Owens (who, however, did not live in this accommodation), the most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer Olympics with four gold medals.

In December 2016, the property around the “Speisehaus der Nations” became the property of the Nuremberg-based terraplan Immobilien- und Treuhandgesellschaft mbH , which intends to develop a location for exclusive living here, taking into account the preservation of historical monuments. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in summer 2017, and work is currently ongoing.

  • "House of Nations"

  • Swimming pool in the Olympic Village

  • Sports homes "Dessau", "Dresden", "Schandau", "Zittau"

  • Sports hall in the Olympic Village, exterior view

  • Sports hall in the Olympic Village, interior view

  • Hindenburghaus

  • Hall in the Hindenburghaus

  • Jesse Owens House

  • Commandant's house / photomontage

  • Remnants of the reception building

  • Remains of the bastion (refreshment bar)

  • sports ground

literature

  • Susanne Dost: The Olympic Village in 1936 through the ages. Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-933254-12-4 .
  • Martin Conrath: On the history of the Döberitzer Heide. Supplements # 18. The layout of the Olympic Village from 1936. Compare cartographic and photographic documents. Berlin 2014. mc-mk.de (PDF)
  • Martin Kaule: Olympiastadion Berlin and Olympic Village Elstal. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-766-3 .
  • Emanuel Hübner: The Olympic Village from 1936 . Planning, construction and history of use. Schöningh, Paderborn 2015, ISBN 3-506-77988-5 (636 pages, ill., Graph. Darst., 28 cm; Univ., Diss. Münster (Westphalia), 2014 and d. T .: Emanuel Hübner: planning, construction and Use of the Olympic Village from 1936 ).

Movies

  • The Dream of Olympia - The Nazi Games of 1936 , TV film 2016. First broadcast on July 16, 2016 on Arte .

Web links

Commons : Olympisches Dorf (Berlin)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hitler's eye . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 2008 ( online ).
  2. ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): The remains of the hypocritical Olympic idyll - DW - May 1, 2012 .
  3. ↑ Hans Saalbach (Ed.): Village of Peace . Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1936, pp. 24-25.
  4. ↑ landkartenarchiv.de . Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 13, 2015. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.landkartenarchiv.de
  5. ↑ Focus Online: Olympia 1936 A festival for the dictator .
  6. ↑ Michael Grube: The Olympic Village from 1936 - Elstal .
  7. ↑ Arnd Krüger : The Olympic Games 1936 and the world opinion: their foreign policy significance with special consideration of the USA. Berlin: Bartels & Wernitz, 1972, ISBN 3-87039-925-2 .
  8. Jump up against the decline of the Olympic Village. In: Berliner Morgenpost , April 19, 2010.
  9. ↑ Leonardo Conti: The health service at the XI. Olympic Games in Berlin and the IV Olympic Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936 . Berlin 1938, pp. 46-47.
  10. ↑ Roland Kopp: The "accident" of Captain Wolfgang Fürstner. A lesson on the Janus face of the Olympic Games of 1936 , In: Diethelm Blecking, Lorenz Pfeiffer (Hrsg.): Athletes in the “century” of the camps - profiteers, resistors and victims . Göttingen 2012, pp. 248-254.
  11. ↑ Susanne Dost: The Olympic Village 1936 through the ages . Verlag Bernd Neddermeyer, Berlin 2003, p. 68
  12. ↑ Elstal. DKB foundation
  13. ↑ Great story. In: gold1936.berlin. terraplan Immobilien- und Treuhandgesellschaft mbH, accessed on June 29, 2020 : "In December 2016 we, the company terraplan, acquired the area around the dining house of the nations."
  14. ↑ Steffen Uhlmann: Difficult legacy. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . July 5, 2019, accessed on June 29, 2020 : "The groundbreaking ceremony finally followed in summer 2017"

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '12.6 "  N , 13 ° 0' 35.5"  E