Controversies surrounding the Sport Club Dynamo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into SV Dynamo. (Discuss)

This article is orphaned as very few or no other articles link to it. A member of Wikiproject Orphanage tried to de-orphan this page in June 2008, but was unable to do so. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (June 2008)

The Sportvereinigung (SV) Dynamo was an East German sports association under the patronage of the Stasi, the East German secret police and its leader, Erich Mielke, existing from 1953 to 1990. While immensley successful in international competitions, like Olympic games and World Championships, many controversies remain about the association.

Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi and the Sportvereinigung Dynamo

1 Controversies surrounding the Sport Club Dynamo
2 References
3 Further reading
4 See also

[edit] Controversies surrounding the Sport Club Dynamo

[edit] The case of doping

The Sportvereinigung Dynamo^[1] was especially singled out as a center for doping in the former East Germany^[2]. 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^[3].

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^[4]. 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^[5].

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^[6], 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^[7].

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 ^[8]. Binus was sentenced in August^[9], Pansold in Dezember 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984^[10].

Virtually no East German athlete ever failed an official drugs 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^[11], now called the Institute of Doping Analysis and Sports Biochemistry (IDAS)^[12].

In 2005, fivteen years after the end or the GDR, the manufacturer of the drugs in former East Germany, Jenapharm, still finds itselve involved in numerous lawsuits from doping victims, being sued by almost 200 former athletes^[13]. Many of the substances handed out were, even under East German law, illegal^[14].

Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes who publicly admitted to doping, accusing their coaches^[15]:

Former Sport Club Dynamo athletes disqualified for doping:

Ilona Slupianek^[16] (Ilona Slupianek was tested positiv along with three Finish athletes at the 1977 European Cup, becoming the only East German athlete ever to be convicted of doping^[17])

Based on the selve-admission by Pollack, the United States Olympic Committee asked for the redistribution of gold medals won in the 1976 Olympics^[18]. 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^[19].

Ministry for State Security-The Stasi

[edit] The Stasi and Erich Mielke

Erich Mielke, chief of Dynamo, was also the all-powerful leader of the Stasi^[20], 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^[21]. Some of them were well known athlets, 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^[22].

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^[23].

[edit] Football

With the decision by the East German authorities to create a number of "independent' football clubs in January 1966, the BFC Dynamo Berlin was separated from the Sportvereinigung Dynamo^[24]. The controversies surrounding this club are therefore part of this clubs article. The other Dynamo football departments however remained under the authority of the Sportvereinigung. The accusations of match fixing associated with the BFC Dynamo do not extend to the other Dynamo clubs and a club like Dynamo Dresden remains immensely popular in former East Germany and beyond.