50 years of the Olympics: East German athletes remember the 1972 Olympic sailing competitions

With the exception of 1952 in Helsinki (Finland), 1960 in Rome (Italy) and 1984 in Los Angeles (USA), they were represented in all German Olympic sailing teams of the post-war period: the sailors from the Eastern zone and East Berlin, the GDR or the new federal states - depending on the language used in the past decades. Their entry into the Olympic Games was bumpy, but their performance was all the more successful. The first competition between two German Olympic teams, each with their own emblem, flag and anthem, took place in Kiel in 1972. Memories of the 1972 Olympic sailing competitions as well as the time before and after from the perspective of the athletes from the new federal states will be revived at the 50th anniversary revival of the Olympic sailing competitions off Kiel. From 10 to 21 August, Kiel will combine the future with history. The Joint International German Youth Championships (GIDJM, 13 classes) will kick off the sailing season from 10 to 16 August, before the six Olympic classes from 1972 will be staggered at the start of the revival from 17 to 21 August. Kiel will celebrate its anniversary with numerous other events on land and on the water from 6 August to 8 September.

After there had been no Olympic Games in 1940 and 1944 due to the Second World War, the first post-war games took place in London in 1948 - albeit without German sailors. Four years later, athletes from the Federal Republic of Germany were allowed to take part again. And in 1952, Theodor Thomsen/Erich Natusch/Georg Nowka won bronze in the Dragon ahead of Helsinki/Harmaja (Finland). At the same time, there was the "National Olympic Committee of the Saarland", which sent five women and six men to the 1952 Olympic Games in Finland. Meanwhile, the "National Olympic Committee of the German Democratic Republic" (the state of the GDR had existed since 1949) fought for recognition by the IOC, which, however, only recognised the NOC of the Federal Republic and recommended the formation of a joint team. The GDR initially rejected this.

So after only West German athletes took part in the 1952 Games, the two German NOCs agreed in 1955 to put together a joint team that competed in Melbourne (Australia) in 1956. However, there were no medals. This changed in Rome 1960, where Rolf Mulka/Ingo von Bredow/Hamburg won FD bronze, and in Tokyo 1964, where Willi Kuhweide/Berlin won Finn gold and Peter Ahrendt/Wilfried Lorenz/Ulrich Mense/Rostock won Dragon silver. The tough German-German qualifying battles for the Olympic places were spectacular.

In 1968 in Acapulco (Mexico), there were two German teams for the first time, albeit competing under the same flag (black, red and gold with the Olympic rings) and with the same anthem. Ullrich Libor/Peter Naumann (West) won FD silver, Paul Borowski/Karl-Heinz Thun/Konrad Weichert (East) dragon bronze for the German teams.

The first competition between two German Olympic teams, each with their own emblem, flag and anthem, took place off Kiel in 1972. The GDR team had to call itself "East Germany".

The Olympic history of the GDR sailors

In 1956 in Melbourne, Australia, Jürgen Vogler from East Berlin's SC Einheit, now the Berlin-Grünau Yacht Club, sailed to fourth place in the Finn Dinghy. It was the best result of the ten-strong all-German sailing contingent, which included another team member from the East, his club mate Karl-Heinz Wegener, as a replacement for Jürgen Vogler. In 1964 in Enoshima, Japan, at the last Games with a joint German team, the Rostock team of Peter Ahrend/Ullrich Mense/Winfried Lorenz won the silver medal in the Dragon class, the second medal for the all-German team after Olympic champion Willy Kuhweide in the Finn.

The next Olympic sailing competitions took place in Kiel in 1972 - 50 years ago now. With the exception of the Tempest, the GDR was represented in all classes. The fifteen-strong squad consisted of:

Hans-Christian Schröder (ASK Vorwärts Rostock) - Finn-Dinhgy (7th place); after finishing his active career coach, later head coach of ASK Vorwärts Rostock.

Herbert Weichert/Hans-Joachim Lange (SC Empor Rostock/ASK Vorwärts Rostock) finished 17th in the Star boat. After his active time, Weichert became Finn coach at SC Empor Rostock. After reunification, he was the Finn dinghy coach for North Rhine-Westphalia.

Herbert Hüttner/Dietmar Gedde (ASK Vorwärts Rostock), 13th place in the FD. Together with Ulf Pagenkopf from the same club, Hüttner becomes vice world champion in the FD in 1974. After his active time, he becomes 470 coach at ASK Vorwärts Rostock. Gedde ends his active career in 1972 and also becomes a coach (OK Dinghy) at ASK Vorwärts Rostock. After reunification, he is a junior coach at Warnemünder SC until his retirement.
Paul Borowski/Konrad Weichert/Karl-Heinz Thun (SC Empor Rostock) compete in the Dragon. After the bronze medal in Acapulco in 1968, it is the silver medal in Kiel. Weichert and Thun end their competitive sporting activities with the elimination of the dragons from the Olympics. Borowski becomes a coach at SC Empor Rostock and develops his sons Jörn and Bodo into world-class athletes in the 470 and FD. Jörn Borowski/Egbert Svensson win silver in the 470 at the 1980 Olympics in Tallinn. Paul was involved in his Rostock yacht club until his death in 2012 and looked after the VSaW's flagship, the two-master "Ebb-Tide", in his role as the VSaW's starting ship on the Kiel Week regatta courses until the 2000s.
Roland Schwarz/Werner Christoph/Lothar Köpsell (SC Berlin-Grünau) finish 14th in the Soling. Schwarz will still be in Montreal in 1976 as a substitute in the Soling. All three end their careers as competitive athletes in 1976. Schwarz becomes a cameraman and photographer for the analysis at the Turn- und Sportclub Berlin, and after reunification he takes on the same role at the OSP Berlin. Christoph is a mechanics specialist at the famous FES, the secret forge of the GDR and, after the reunification of West German sport, for materials and equipment in Berlin-Oberschöneweide.

From stand-in to most successful coach, from talented youngster to most successful sailor

The substitutes off Kiel are Dieter Below (SC Berlin-Grünau) as helmsman for Dragon and Soling and Michael Zachries (SC Berlin-Grünau) as foresailor for Dragon and Soling. Klaus-Eckart Meyer (ASK Vorwärts Rostock) is substitute as FD foresailor, Bernd Dehmel (SC Berlin-Grünau) substitute for the Finn dinghy. Below wins the bronze medal in the Soling together with Zachries and Olaf Engelhardt (SC Berlin-Grünau) in Montreal (Canada) in 1976. All three end their careers after the 1980 Olympic regattas in Tallinn, which are boycotted by 41 Western countries due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Four years later, 19 countries of the Eastern Bloc, including the GDR, stayed away from the Games in Los Angeles (USA) due to hostile sentiment.

Dieter Below becomes deputy general secretary of the German Sailing Association of the GDR, after reunification he works as competitive sports coordinator at the Berlin Sailing Association. Michael Zachries becomes a full-time sailmaker at SC Berlin-Grünau and moves to Bavaria in 1990, where he works as club manager of the Münchener Yacht Club until his retirement.

Bernd Dehmel ends his active career in 1972. After completing his coaching studies, he took over the Finn-Dinghy training group, later Soling, at SC Berlin-Grünau, today's Yacht Club Berlin-Grünau. As such, he led Jochen Schümann to the top of the world as the best German sailor of all time. Schümann and his crews won three gold and one silver medal at the Olympic Games, as well as numerous World Championship and European Championship titles under successful coach Bernd Dehmel. His protégés included Frank Butzmann, Dirk Loewe, Heiko Birke and Helmar Nauck, among others, who also won medals at international championships. A total of three Olympic gold and one silver medal as well as 35 World Championship and European Championship medals are the result of his work. Bernd Dehmel worked as national coach for the Soling and 470 class for more than a decade, from 1990 to 2002, before retiring in 2002.

The official GDR contingent in Kiel in 1972 included two young sailors from SC Berlin-Grünau, who were just eighteen years old. The Finn dinghy sailors Detlef Schreiber and Jochen Schümann had been sent by the GDR to the international youth camp organised by the IOC in recognition of their previous sporting successes. Four years later in Montreal, Schümann was to become the youngest Olympic gold medallist in the Finn dinghy and start his world career in Olympic sailing, which was unprecedented in Germany.

Even though it was the GDR team's first appearance at the Olympic Games with their own flag and national anthem, the GDR sailors were well known in Kiel, as they had often taken part in Kiel Week or European and World Championship events there before. And this continued after 1972. In the German-German Sports Treaty of 8 May 1974, attendance at Kiel Week and the International Baltic Sea Week (now Warnemünde Week) was even made compulsory for the other sailing association.

Ten of the 15 Kiel Olympians from the GDR alone worked as coaches or in other functions in one of the performance centres in Berlin, Schwerin and Rostock after the end of their active careers. And even after the Games, Kiel was often the destination for GDR sailors, coaches and support staff.

Meeting point in the Drachen-Appartement - together again for Germany since 1992

The GDR team lived in the 1972 Olympic Hotel in Kiel-Schilksee. The internal centre was the flat of the Dragon crew around Paul Borowski. All team meetings were also held here. Time and again - mostly initiated by the press - a special "German-German relationship" was discussed. Today, as then, the players believe that the "special thing" from their point of view was that they spoke the same mother tongue. Of course, they knew each other very well, as some of the players had competed together in a team in 1964. But of course they focussed on themselves. But it was just as natural to talk to each other on the jetty or when sailing out, to exchange ideas. But that was also the case before and after 1972. The common language, the same sport also unites competitors.

What officials, not coaches, thought and what they had to pay attention to was another matter. In any case, they were smart enough not to bother their athletes with it. For the East German athletes, their only priority was to take part in the Olympic Games. To this day, Herrmann, Below and Dehmel have a special relationship with Kiel. Until the pandemic, a three-day trip to Kiel Week and a visit to the meeting tent of the North German Regatta Club from Hamburg and the Berlin club Segler-Haus am Wannsee was a fixed destination in early summer.

Until 1988, the athletes of the two German states sailed separately before Olympic reunification took place in 1992. Until then, the sailors (women had only been competing since 1980) had won two gold medals, one silver and two bronze medals for the Federal Republic and two gold medals, two silver medals and one bronze medal for the GDR.

Text: Dr Klaus Müller/Hermann Hell