SV Dynamo

SV Dynamo
Founded	27 March 1953 (1953-03-27); dissolved: 23 November 1989 (1989-11-23)
League	Olympics, World cup, European Championship Nat. League
Arena	Palast der Republik, Dynamo-Sportforum, Altenberg bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track, Dynamo Sports Hotel
Stadium	Dynamo Stadium (Dresden), Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sportpark, Heinz Steyer Stadion and others
Based in	East Berlin,  East Germany
Colors	wine-red white/ wine-red silver
Owner(s)	Ministry of Interior of the GDR: Volkspolizei, Zollverwaltung, Ministry for State Security, Feuerwehr
President	Erich Mielke
Championships	2.187 nat.; approx. 182 European cup medals approx. 324 World cup medals; approx. 215 Olympic medals[1]

The Sportvereinigung Dynamo (German:  Sportvereinigung Dynamo (help·info)) (Dynamo Sports Association) was the sport organization of the security agencies (Volkspolizei, Ministry for State Security and customs) of former East Germany. The sports club was founded on 27 March 1953 and was headquartered in Hohenschönhausen in East Berlin. From the date of its inception until 23 November 1989 the president of the SV Dynamo was Erich Mielke, who was also the Minister of State Security. Dynamo was created in accordance with the multi-sports club model developed in the Soviet Union and adopted throughout Eastern Europe. From the beginning it had an overtly political as well as sporting agenda and its many successes were always portrayed as a triumph of the GDR state. During the German reunification in 1989 the SV Dynamo was liquidated. At its height the association had a membership of over 280,000 active members.^[2] Athletes of the association enjoyed considerable success both in national and international competitions, winning for example more than 200 olympic medals. After the German reunification the systematic doping of Dynamo athletes from 1971 until 1989 was revealed in German media reports. The systematic doping of athletes was done under the supervision of the Staatssicherheit and with full backing of the government.^[3]

Organization

The SV Dynamo was divided into fifteen regional units, corresponding to the fifteen districts of the German Democratic Republic. Within each regional unit individual sports clubs existed, with each sport club specializing in different disciplines. 290 sections were included SG Dynamo Dresden (football), SC Dynamo Hoppegarten (judo, shooting sports, parachuting), the SC Dynamo Klingenthal (Nordic skiing), SG Dynamo Luckenwalde (wrestling), SG Dynamo Potsdam (rowing and canoe sprint), SG Dynamo Weißwasser (ice hockey) and the SG Dynamo Zinnwald in Altenberg (biathlon, bobsleigh, luge, skeleton). The most famous sports club of the SV Dynamo was probably the SC Dynamo Berlin offering most Olympic disciplines. The sports system was not designed for transfers, but on schedule. The athletes had to be viewed in their own country.

Administrators and coaches from Dynamo Berlin were often sent to support their development. The district organizations always wore the initials SV Dynamo ... . The districts been the same districts of the state. ^[4] For small children, there was even a Dynamo-Kindergarten. Henceforth the larger children trained every day before and after classes. For the training, there existed a basic plan. If the children themselves are not good at school, they were excluded from the training. The emphasis has been respected that the athletes had to pursue themselves the sporting ideology, because otherwise no success would have been guaranteed. Each year, the best Dynamo-athlete were voted. Few could win 50,- M when they themselves were those who chose the sportswoman/ sportsman of the year. Dynamo employed a planning cycle that set out the club's objectives for the upcoming four year period.

Politics

This sports club was anti-fascistic and communistic. The grounders of thus were been former prisoners in concentration camps and leaders in the battle against National socialists and Social Democrats at the Weimar Republic. The Dynamo-Youth commemorated about it at the Soviet War Memorial (Treptower Park), Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The names of murdered/death communists was given as honorary titles for Dynamo-Clubs, which must fought for it... . For example: SG Dynamo "Feliks E. Dzierzynski" Dresden or SG Dynamo "Dr. Richard Sorge" Erfurt. There were also many hymns and odes of Dynamo, which would written. Gerhard Kube, Helmut Baierl and Kurt Barthel formed many poems, which playing the sports club a role.

SV Dynamo districts

The districts been the same districts of the state with: Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Rostock, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Neubrandenburg, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Schwerin, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Magdeburg, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Potsdam, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Frankfurt Oder, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation East Berlin, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Cottbus, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Halle, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Leipzig, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Erfurt, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Gera, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Suhl, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Dresden and Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Karl-Marx-Stadt. Every district has owned a wine-red silk banner with these writing. The measure is 2.8 × 1.5 m, with, of course, a logo of the SV.

Members

Key to East German sporting success was a pyramid system with schoolchildren being assessed for athletic potential and the best (typically the top 2.5%) in each school-year being offered specialised coaching. A small fraction of those would go on to become the top adult athletes of the next generation. This model was initially derided in the West as a "sausage machine" but it has since been adopted in modified form by Australia, France, Spain and others with thousands of children being educated at specialised (often residential) sports schools rather than going through the normal high school system. Overall, 3,7 million athletes were in the GDR at the German Sports federation (DTSB) registered in many other successful clubs in 1989.

Members by year^[5]

Year	Adults	Children	Total
1953	23162	none	23162
1955	55991	10874	66856
1958	90160	18846	109006
1961	105530	42822	148352
1966	118651	54691	173306
1970	131752	74266	206018
1972	139013	85295	224308
1974	144356	93071	237427
1975	146127	96666	242793
1976	148054	99337	247391
1983	170.000	110.000	280.000

Trainers

Most coaches were also teachers or had other specific occupations. They were all in principle to took members fears before starting competitions. Also said that never was like everything bad could happen if .... Problems are always packed at its source in order to eradicate this. At the same time, they were also the guardian of morality.

Trainers by year^[6]

Year	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3/4	Total
1964	none	none	none	9989
1965	none	none	none	9673
1966	6785	2466	1362	10613
1967	6717	2476	1489	10682
1968	7078	2731	1712	11521
1969	7536	3009	1915	12460
1970	7321	3211	2058	12590
1971	7215	3412	2119	12746
1972	7334	3598	2580	13512
1973	7394	3791	3016	14201
1974	11358	3906	3098	18362
1975	11812	3949	3407	19168
1976	12369	4219	3524	20112

Controversies surrounding the Sport Club Dynamo Berlin

The case of doping

The Sportvereinigung Dynamo^[7] was especially singled out as a center for doping in the former East Germany.^[8] Many former club officials and some athletes found themselves charged after the dissolution of the country. A special page on the internet was created by doping victims trying to gain justice and compensation, listing people involved in doping at the club, the so-called Dynamo Liste.^[9]

State-endorsed doping began with the Cold War when every eastern bloc gold was an ideological victory. From 1974, Manfred Ewald, the head of the GDR's sports federation, imposed blanket doping. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the country of 17 million collected nine gold medals. Four years later the total was 20 and in 1976 it doubled again to 40.^[10] Ewald was quoted as having told coaches, "They're still so young and don't have to know everything." He was given a 22-month suspended sentence, to the outrage of his victims.^[11]

Often, doping was carried out without the knowledge of the athletes, some of them as young as ten years of age. It is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse,^[12] one of them is Rica Reinisch, a triple Olympic champion and world record-setter at the Moscow Games in 1980, has since suffered numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts. Athletes like Renate Vogel, silver medalist at the 1972 Olympics in the swimming competitions, were told the injections were vitamins but failed to believe the explanation and quit her sport.^[13]

Two former Dynamo Berlin club doctors, Dieter Binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 80, and Bernd Pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in East-Berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances.^[14] Binus was sentenced in August,^[15] Pansold in December 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984.^[16]

Virtually no East German athlete ever failed an official drug test, though Stasi files show that many did, indeed, produced positive tests at Kreischa, the Saxon laboratory (German:Zentrale Dopingkontroll-Labor des Sportmedizinischen Dienstes) that was at the time approved by the International Olympic Committee,^[17] now called the Institute of Doping Analysis and Sports Biochemistry (IDAS).^[18]

In 2005, fifteen years after the end or the GDR, the manufacturer of the drugs in former East Germany, Jenapharm, still finds itself involved in numerous lawsuits from doping victims, being sued by almost 200 former athletes.^[19] Many of the substances handed out were, even under East German law, illegal.^[20]

Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes who publicly admitted to doping, accusing their coaches^[21]:

• Daniela Hunger
• Andrea Pollack
• Katharina Bullin
• Andreas Krieger

Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes disqualified for doping:

• Ilona Slupianek^[22] (Ilona Slupianek tested positive along with three Finnish athletes at the 1977 European Cup, becoming the only East German athlete ever to be convicted of doping^[23]). Based on the self-admission by Pollack, the United States Olympic Committee asked for the redistribution of gold medals won in the 1976 Olympics.^[24] Despite court rulings in Germany that substantiate claims of systematic doping by some East German swimmers, the IOC executive board announced that it has no intention of revising the Olympic record books. This is an understandable decision as it could otherwise trigger a flood of such claims involving former eastern block athletes. In rejecting the American petition on behalf of its women's medley relay team in Montreal and a similar petition from the British Olympic Association on behalf of Sharron Davies, the IOC made it clear that it wanted to discourage any such appeals in the future.^[25]

The Stasi and Erich Mielke

Erich Mielke, chief of Dynamo, was also the all-powerful leader of the Stasi,^[26] the Secret Police of East Germany, mother organisation of Dynamo. The Stasi was widely regarded as one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. The intensity of state surveillance was probably without parallel anywhere in the world. In 1989, the Stasi had 91,000 staff members and 174,000 unofficial collaborators - a ratio of one spy for every 62 citizens.^[27] Some of them were well known athletes, like Harald Czudaj, who admitted working as an informer for the Stasi, writing at least 10 reports about teammates and officials of the Dynamo bobsled club in Altenberg, East Germany, from 1988 to 1990. He apologized to his teammates. After his admission, Czudaj's teammates appealed to German officials to let him compete in the 1992 Winter Olympics because they had not been harmed by his work for the Stasi.^[28] Mielke himself was sentenced in Berlin to six years in prison in 1993 for the murder of two policemen in 1931. However he was freed after two years when he was diagnosed as senile.^[29]

After reunification, the members of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Watch Regiment, all soldiers were automatically members of Dynamo, got no pension, although they could win sporting successes. It is proven that only an elite army members and no spies were known from the MFS, which has been belonged to. That these members of agencies weren't been agents. Also only if they are served for terrorism defense.^[30] Some also get little pension, although they worked as a teacher, and their acts would have been checked. ^[31]

Employees of the State Security were camouflaged as civilians in events. Sometimes they did recognize themselfes with the same souvenirs. For example: Bananas and Sandwiches. These was a sort of a "sport-police". On Hooligans are even used agent's. That happened for years and nobody could it remember. This were often happened with the BFC Dynamo and the SG Dynamo Dresden. Members of the organs of the Ministry of Interior of the GDR had to support the SV, otherwise, there was not a good omen for them.^[32]

Historical circumstances

In addition, the Dresden Sportclub (the successor of Dresden English Football Club) has been dissolved by strange action before the founding of the SG Dynamo Dresden. Erich Mielke himself ordered the ban in lifeless behaviour. The DSC was previously the most popular club in Dresden and at the last German championship celebration were hundreds of thousands of fans. Moreover, the switch in the professional field athletes were assessed on personality and attitude so true talents often missed the train. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was no international morality in the sense of doping. Seldom gave anybody the technical resources, laws and controls and it is nothing to the latest WADA control standards of today. In addition other clubs, associations suspects against each other for doping at a hight international level, especially in the Cold War era.

Dynamo-Hall of fame

They lived across in normal rented houses besides workers or even came from peasant families. They got no million contracts for their actions. Some also studied along their athletic careers, with extra curriculas has been prepared for them. This is proved as progressive.

• Gerhard Kaminski awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit for his super trainer career at the Dynamo-Sports-Hall in Gymnastics. He trained world class gymnasts in a 50 years record era, for the Olympic Games. In 1999, he awarded the Manfred von Richthofen - price.^[33]
• Dynamo athletes won medals in many Olympic and World Championship events. The annual contribution defrauded per year only converted 0,60 - € / 0,90- $/ 12,- M. The citizen of the GDR deserved in average approximately 500,- East German mark (Mark) per month.
• The genius Dr. med. orth. hab. Karin Büttner-Janz (Olympic winner, medical scientist on the Humboldt University), is the gymnast 20th century. She also invented the artificial intervertebral disc.
• Dipl. Ing. Sigmund Jähn was the first cosmonaut in space from the GDR. He was also an honorary member of the SV. The honorary title does he won for the SV Dynamo district Karl-Marx-Stadt; at the SC Dynamo Klingenthal, in 1978. When he got the certificate, he said: "As a skijumper were Harry Glaß my personal model for the start to the Cosmos." This skijumper had nearly broken neck, and was in pension of ability.^[34]
• Dynamo athletes were also the one, which may could learn karate or even jujutsu as well as the general citizens could only learn judo.
• Spies in the United States has earned the complete knowledge about the martial arts training of the CIA and Dynamo became this informations.^[35]
• One of the best of the bests, were Maxi Gnauck (very famous), Bernd Wiesner, Jutta Hampe, Katrin Boron, Caren Metschuck mostly in rowing, gymnastics and parashuting.

Among the Dynamo top scorers were:^{[36] [37] [38]}

Achievements

Olympics

The sports club won approx. 215 Olympic medals in a 37 years period.^[39]

World championships

The sports club won approx. 324 World Cup medals in a 37 years period. Completely won the SV Dynamo more as World champion titles as hundreds of other nations (2008).The most titles have won the rowers.^[40]

European championships

The athletes won approx. 182 European titles.^[1]

Championships

The Dynamo-Athletes won altogether 2.187 titles in 35 sport-sections in a 37-year period.^[41] The Dynamo-Athletes won altogether 2.187 titles in 35 sport-sections over a 37-year period.^[41]

With 280,000 members, it is not surprising that the SV Dynamo multi-sport club has a lot of championships won in the GDR, so that a separate category should be needed. ^{[42] [43] [44] [45]}

Gallery

Photos

• 

  Schwerin's multi use hall

• 

  Arnhold-Bath, Dresden

• 

  Sailing in Warnemünde

• 

  Swimmer

• 

  Jahn-Stadium (East Berlin)

• 

  Berlin indoor swimming pool

• 

  Gymnastics

• 

  1973, Munich

• 

  Cross country running

• 

  Rowing

• 

  Indoor swimming pool Rostock

• 

  Dresden, Steyer-Stadium

See also

• Use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport

For other famous multi-sport clubs:

• Red Bull Sports
• Panathinaikos
• Real Madrid
• Sporting Clube de Portugal
• The New York Athletic Club

Wikimedia Commons has media related to SV Dynamo.

Further reading

• Hormonal doping and androgenization of athletes: a secret program of the German Democratic Republic government, by: Werner W. Franke (Hölderlin High School, Heidelberg, Germany) and Brigitte Berendonk, publisher:American Association for Clinical Chemistry

Literature

• Pickard, Ralph (2012). STASI Decorations and Memorabilia Volume II. Frontline Historical Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9797199-2-9 (English – Contains a 32-page Chapter on the Stasi and Dynamo)

References

External links

Look up Dynamo in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

v t e SV Dynamo Sports Club Organization Magazine Award items and badges Stasi Decorations and Memorabilia Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment Volkspolizei Stasi President GDR championships Hall of fame Soviet brotherorganization District's Organization - Schwerin SG Dynamo Schwerin District's Organization - Frankfurt (Oder) SG Dynamo Fürstenwalde District's Organization - Berlin SC Dynamo Berlin SCD. B. (ice hockey) BFC Dynamo SG Dynamo Hohenschönhausen District's Organization - Erfurt SG Dynamo Erfurt District's Organization - Dresden SG Dynamo Weißwasser SG Dynamo Dresden SG Dynamo Heide Dresden SG Dynamo Zinnwald Venues Sportforum Hohenschönhausen Dynamo-Stadium (Dresden) Altenberg bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton track Palace of the Republic (Berlin) Heinz-Steyer-Stadion Aschbergschanze Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark Zentralstadion Karls Marx-Stadt Congresshall Schwerin GDR sports Sports and games