Athletes flee from the GDR

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As athletes escapes from the GDR are alignments of athletes from the GDR referred to in Western countries. Under GDR law, these escapes, referred to as illegal border crossing , were considered criminal offenses. The Stasi called the at least 615 GDR athletes who fled to the West between 1952 and 1989 as sports traitors .

Motifs

Senior athletes enjoyed a privileged life and good training conditions in the GDR. Nevertheless, numerous athletes decided to leave the GDR. The reasons for this were varied. Some of them rejected the political, economic and social conditions prevailing in the GDR. Athletes who expressed themselves critically or whose negative attitude towards the GDR system was known were denied development opportunities in competitive sport. The high expectations and pressure to succeed were also a reason to want to leave the GDR. For example, those responsible often threatened to reduce or stop state support if the specified goals were not achieved.

Types of Escape

Numerous athletes, sports officials and doctors left the GDR even before the Wall was built . Occasionally entire teams were drawn to the west, for example in the case of SG Dresden-Friedrichstadt under the later national coach Helmut Schön or the SC Union Oberschöneweide, which was newly founded as SC Union 06 Berlin in West Berlin . After the final closure of the inner-German border, however, escapes remained individual actions.

The easiest way to leave the GDR was at competitions in western countries. Here the athletes had the chance to separate themselves relatively unmolested before, during or after competitions. Often this was done with the help of foreign officials or West German athletes. For fear of possible repression by the Stasi, such support was mostly kept secret and only known after the fall of the Wall . As a result of these escapes, the GDR only took athletes with them to competitions in western countries who were considered to be sufficiently reliable ( travel cadre ). In order to make a possible escape more difficult, GDR athletes were deprived of their personal documents when staying in the Federal Republic.

Athletes who were not part of the travel roster due to a lack of performance or loyalty to the line were limited to the classic escape routes. The former GDR champion , Axel Mitbauer, swam over 400 meters of freestyle swimming across the Baltic Sea to the west.

Repression by the State Security

For the government of the GDR, the escapes of prominent athletes or former athletes were particularly unpleasant, as they were supposed to help raise the GDR's international reputation as "diplomats in training suits". Therefore, from the beginning of the 1970s, the MfS tried to preventively counteract possible “escapes from the republic” by athletes through a comprehensive surveillance system and operational personal controls . For example, there was a central operational process (ZOV) "sports traitor" with which 63 athletes were "processed". The "safety area" sport comprised a total of at least 100,000 top athletes and their friends and family members, who the MfS used around 3,000 unofficial employees to monitor .

After a successful escape, the authorities often tried to persuade the people concerned to return with the help of their friends and relatives, who were put under massive pressure by the Stasi to do so. If this method was unsuccessful or if the fugitives did not return voluntarily, they and their relatives remaining in the GDR had to fear that they would be victims of retaliation. This included spying, manipulation and defamation that extended into the private sphere, with which, among other things, a systematic alienation of all those involved should be achieved. These so-called disintegration measures also took place outside the GDR and could possibly be life-threatening for the athletes who had withdrawn.

In the GDR, refugees were often stigmatized in the media as “traitors to the ideals of socialism” or portrayed as “victims of unscrupulous human traffickers”. In addition, the state authorities tried to make the persons concerned disappear from the public eye. This could lead to the subsequent deletion of names from competition lists and statistics as well as the retouching of team photos. Sports editorial staff who had to implement this directive were often the first to find out about the attempted escape.

Athletes who have fled

According to counts by the GDR State Security in the final report of the " ZOV Sportverräter" from December 1989 on the spying on renegade athletes by the State Security, at least 615 athletes from the GDR , trainers and doctors fled to the West between 1952 and 1989 .

Soccer player

fled after completing their active career

Cyclist

Track and field athletes

fled after completing their active career
  • Ines Geipel - 1989, after a first attempt to escape failed in 1984

More athletes

fled after completing their active career

literature

  • Jutta Braun: "Anyone anywhere - sport once a week" - the triumph and illusion of GDR sport. In: Thomas Großbölting (Ed.): Friedensstaat, Leseland, Sportnation? - GDR legends put to the test. Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-543-0 , pp. 184f.
  • Jutta Braun, René Wiese, Claudia de la Garza: ZOV sports traitors. Top athletes on the run. Book accompanying the exhibition. An exhibition by the Center for German Sports History Berlin-Brandenburg eV (ZdS) in cooperation with the artist Laura Soria and the exhibition agency exhibeo . Center for German Sports History Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-035054-2 .
  • Jörg Berger , Regina Carstensen: My two halves A life in East and West. rororo Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-498-00654-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ You must win. In: Der Spiegel. August 25, 1969.
  2. ↑ For a list see for example refugees . In: The time. March 1, 1968.
  3. ↑ See Friedliche Revolution: Sportverräter ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / friedlicherevolution.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
  4. ↑ The free swimmer . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
  5. ↑ Elevator to freedom. In: Der Spiegel . 29/2011, p. 99.
  6. ↑ Sportecho ignores Berndt. No list place . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. August 9, 1988.
  7. ↑ Escape from a broken neck . In: Der Tagesspiegel. 4th August 2010.
  8. ↑ A question of generations . In: Berliner Zeitung. August 6, 2010.
  9. ^ Felix Lill: GDR: Wall children and sports traitors. The Berlin Wall was built 50 years ago, and it separated east and west in sports too. Many careers collapsed because of her, others were only made possible - not all athletes suffered under the wall. In: DiePresse.com. August 21, 2011. Retrieved July 25, 2017 .
  10. ↑ See letter from Manfred Ewald to Egon Krenz of October 1, 1985, SAMPO DY 30 IV 2 / 2.039 / 247.
  11. ^ GDR: Swallow pills or sweep out factories . In: Der Spiegel. 12/1979, last accessed on March 14, 2012.
  12. ↑ Jutta Braun: "Sportfreund Mielke" - The Ministry for State Security and the Cold War in Sport. In: Carlos Collado Seidel (Ed.): Secret Services, Diplomacy and War - The Mechanism of International Relations. Berlin 2013, p. 108.
  13. ↑ I realized: For the bigwigs you are just a piece of material . In: Welt-Online. February 25, 2006.
  14. ↑ Stasi: The source is reliable . In: Der Spiegel . 46/1999.