Free­dom in mo­ti­on: Sport as a mir­ror of so­cie­ty in the Wei­mar Re­pu­blic

The spe­cial ex­hi­bi­ti­on “Free­dom in Mo­ti­on — Sport in the Wei­mar Re­pu­blic” in the House of the Wei­mar Re­pu­blic sheds light on how sport be­ca­me a mass phe­no­me­non in the 1920s. Wi­th the brea­king down of old so­cial ta­boos, mo­re lei­su­re time and de­mo­cra­tic struc­tures, sport de­ve­lo­ped from a pri­vi­le­ge of the up­per clas­ses to a wi­de­ly ac­ces­si­ble lei­su­re ac­ti­vi­ty. New op­por­tu­ni­ties for par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on ope­ned up for wo­men in par­ti­cu­lar, alt­hough rest­ric­tions still exis­ted.

The ex­hi­bi­ti­on shows ma­ny facets of this tur­bu­lent time: af­ter the ab­oli­ti­on of com­pul­so­ry mi­li­ta­ry ser­vice, sport gai­ned po­li­ti­cal si­gni­fi­can­ce and num­e­rous sports cen­tres we­re built th­roug­hout the coun­try. De­spi­te Ger­many’s in­ter­na­tio­nal iso­la­ti­on af­ter the First World War, Ger­man ath­le­tes at­trac­ted at­ten­ti­on. In ad­di­ti­on to their sport­ing achie­ve­ments, their of­ten for­got­ten bio­gra­phies are al­so ma­de vi­si­ble. The ex­hi­bi­ti­on is al­so de­di­ca­ted to con­tro­ver­si­al ques­ti­ons about pro­fes­sio­nal sport and po­li­ti­cal in­fluen­ces and pro­vi­des sur­pri­sing ans­wers, such as why Ger­ma­ny was cho­sen to host the 1931 Olym­pic Games. The ex­hi­bi­ti­on im­pres­si­ve­ly de­mons­tra­tes that sport and po­li­tics have al­ways be­en clo­se­ly lin­ked.