Sporting culture

Unity and disunity may be constant themes of German history, but in sports and physical culture Germans have long been well organized. In the early 19th century, coincident with the rise of nationalism, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, considered the “father of gymnastics,” founded the turnverein, a gymnastics club, and invented several of the disciplines that are now part of the Olympic gymnastics program. At the same time, Johann Christoph Friedrich GutsMuths initiated school programs that helped bring physical education to the forefront of German education. Ideals of health—Gesund—and athletic prowess became important components of the German conception of self. These ideals were later critical to the Nazi conception of the ideal German.

German athletes participated in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens. In the aftermath of World War I, the country was not invited to the Olympic Games until the 1928 Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. However, Berlin was designated as the site for the 1936 Olympics in 1931, before the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, who transformed the Games into a stage to promote Nazi ideals, though this effort was thwarted somewhat by key victories by African American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens and other “non-Aryan” athletes. The 1936 Berlin Olympics also inaugurated the tradition of the Olympic torch relay, with the lighted torch carried from Olympia, Greece, to the Berlin stadium.

Nazi influence on German sports was not limited to the Olympics. German Max Schmeling, the world heavyweight boxing champion between 1930 and 1932, pulled a stunning upset of American Joe Louis in 1936 and quickly found himself an unwilling pawn of Nazi propaganda. Their rematch, won by Louis, generated enormous publicity and became the most politicized fight of the century.

Following partition, East and West German athletes competed on the same national team from 1956 to 1964. The two countries then split their teams for the next six Olympiads, joining the front lines of Cold War athletic competition. In 1972 Munich hosted the Summer Games, which were marred when Palestinian terrorists took hostage and killed 11 members of the Israeli team.

Germany’s Olympic teams—East, West, and unified—have dominated many events, especially swimming. Indeed, in 1976 and 1980 East German female swimmers, including the famed Kornelia Ender, set more than 10 world records and captured 22 of the 26 gold medals. Among other renowned German Olympians are swimmers Kristin Otto, Michael Gross, and Franziska van Almsick, figure skater Katarina Witt, speed skaters Karin Enke and Christa Luding-Rothenburger, luger Georg Hackl, sprinter Armin Hary, canoer Birgit Fischer, and equestrians Hans Günter Winkler and Isabell Werth.

Football (soccer) is a passion for many Germans, and German teams excel at all levels of competition. The Bundesliga is among the world’s most respected professional football leagues. The country’s most famous international player was Franz Beckenbauer, a Bavarian who led his Bayern Munich club to three consecutive European Cup titles in the 1970s. Beckenbauer also was captain of the West German national team that won the 1974 World Cup, and he was the manager of the West German team that won the World Cup in 1990. In 2006 Germany hosted the World Cup. German tennis players Steffi Graf, Boris Becker, and Michael Stich also excelled on the international circuit, winning more than 25 major titles during the 1980s and ’90s. Golfer Bernhard Langer won the Masters Tournament in 1985 and 1993, and Martin Kaymer captured the PGA Championship in 2010. The popularity of basketball grew considerably in the last part of the 20th century, and Germany began to produce world-class professional players such as Detlef Schrempf and Dirk Nowitzki.

The government of the Third Reich militarized many German sports, equating athletic and military excellence. In the period after World War II, organized sports suffered from this tainted association, but the devotion of Germans to health and fitness continued, and the West German government quickly made efforts to democratize sporting activities by emphasizing recreation and personal development over victory. Physical education is mandatory throughout the primary and secondary grades, and summertime camps devoted to outdoor recreation, especially swimming, hiking, and mountaineering, enjoy widespread popularity. Academic study of sports and sporting cultures has also flourished in Germany.

Leisure activities

Leisure is a major pursuit, if not an industry, in German life. As did workers in most Western industrial countries, Germans once toiled under an unrestricted six-day workweek, often 10 hours a day with breaks only on Sundays and for major feasts and festivals. Added to these traditional feasts and festivals now are several secular holidays and three to six weeks or more of paid vacation time. Moreover, the German workweek is now 40 hours or less. As a result, Germans have more leisure time than workers of most Western countries. This abundance of leisure has become a national preoccupation, and the German Leisure Association conducts research on leisure activity and dispenses information and advice.

The German pattern of recreation is characterized by a duality of traditional and modern approaches. To a surprising extent in a country so highly industrialized, ancient feasts and practices are still observed on a wide scale in both Roman Catholic and Protestant areas, especially pre-Lenten celebrations known as Fasching in the southern regions or Karneval (carnival) in the Rhineland. In addition to the major religious festivals—Easter, Christmas, Whitsun (which are also national holidays), and, in Roman Catholic districts, Corpus Christi Day and Assumption—there are numerous local celebrations—wine, beer, harvest, hunting, and historical festivals—the so-called Volksfeste that are deeply rooted in German custom, the most notable being Munich’s Oktoberfest, held each September.

Although the traditional observances continue unabated, Germans have adopted a wide range of more modern forms of recreation, amusement, and relaxation. Travel has become the favoured pastime of a majority of Germans. More than half of all adults take at least one annual trip for pleasure, and a great number take more than one. Many Germans now take both a winter and a summer vacation. Older persons often take a paid Kur at a spa to rest and recuperate, in addition to a holiday trip for pleasure. Germans spend more time and money on trips abroad than the citizens of any other country.

The weekend, a latecomer in Germany, has become firmly established. Private recreation typically includes spectator amusements and sports (especially football), active sports and physical exercise, automobile excursions, the pursuit of hobbies, visits with friends and family, and the long-favoured German pastime of walking or hiking.

It is estimated that about one-fifth of a household’s income in Germany’s western regions is spent on leisure expenses. Many institutions, including the government, local communities, schools, churches, and companies, encourage citizens to channel their free time into useful, rewarding, and healthful pursuits by providing physical facilities, impetus, and other prerequisites for all phases of public recreation. Leisure in Germany is now regarded—much like education and vocational training, decent housing, a job, good public transportation, health and disability insurance, and pensions—as an entitlement and a valuable adjunct of social policy.

In East Germany, leisure activity was arranged very differently. The state ideal was group leisure, group holidays, and group travel, often organized by the workplace or a youth organization. Cheap holiday facilities were available, especially along the resorts of the Baltic coast. Residents of East Germany were at liberty to travel privately to any of the Warsaw Pact countries and sometimes to Yugoslavia. It is worth noting that the fall of the communist bloc was precipitated in part by the large number of East Germans who, while visiting Hungary, crossed unimpeded into Austria when the Hungarian government opened its border with the West.