What’s become of Otl Aicher’s former abode? A visit to the Allgäu.
Olympia as Politics, Olympia as Utopia, Olympia as Big Business – on the occasion of 50th anniversary of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich
For the Games of the XX Olympiad from August 26 to September 11, 1972 in Munich, Otl Aicher and his team created an all-encompassing design system with the rainbow as the color palette and a dachshund as the mascot. Unpathetic and without any signs of national arrogance, the idea was to show a Germany that lived the Olympic idea of friendly coexistence of nations.
The utopia of the “youth of the world” meeting for cheerful games in a liberal country was shattered by the Palestinian terrorist attack on the Israeli team. The fact that the games were not cancelled as a result led to critical discussions across the world regarding the responsibility and the sense of moral of the IOC. It became clear once again what political dimension the Olympic Games have and how they can be instrumentalized for international conflicts.
Twelve Olympiads later, we have seen games held a year later without spectators due to a worldwide pandemic. After Munich, the Olympics were further politicized and commercialized. “The games must go on,” the statement by Avery Brundage after the assassination has got a validity that seems to be eternal.
The debate about the status quo of the Olympic movement and its ideals has accompanied us for decades. The public image, unfulfilled promises of sustainability, and a readjusting world order have led to fundamental questions about the future of the Games and their social acceptance.
On August 26, 2022, exactly fifty years to the day after the opening of the Games in Munich, the IDZ invites you to a lecture followed by a panel discussion at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste at Pariser Platz.
7:00 p.m.
Welcome
Prof. Fritz Frenkler
Director of the Architectural Art Section of the Akademie der Künste
Prof. Karsten Henze
Chairman of the Board of the IDZ
7:20 p.m.
Lecture
Karsten de Riese
Photographer
Born 1942 in Eisenach. Trained as a photographer in Munich, Karsten de Riese then studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in Ulm. He does freelance work for weekly newspapers and magazines, institutions and commercial enterprises. Moreover, he also works on his own projects. From 1969 to 1972 he was the officially commissioned photographer for the OC of the Olympic Games in Munich. He collaborated with Otl Aicher until his death in 1991. In all of his work, especially his long-term projects, the human being is always important to him in the broadest sense. Karsten de Riese lives in the Isar valley south of Munich.
The officially commissioned photographer of the organizing committee of the 1972 Olympic Games shows his view of the development of a utopia – a vision as a counter-proposal to Berlin 1936 and to games of the present such as 2022 in Beijing. De Riese was an active observer in front of and behind the scenes and accompanied the Games and their protagonists, including Otl Aicher, Willi Daume as well as the officials of the IOC and its president Avery Brundage. His photographs show sports venues that did not serve as purely functional architecture, but were created as a backdrop for an Olympic festival with its own special spirit. The 1972 Games present themselves as a timeless and, to this day, unique intercultural event that united people and nations; the world was a guest.
8:00 p.m.
Panel discussion with:
Dr. Benjamin Bendrich
Sports scientist and teacher, blogger: derballluegtnicht.com
Born 1982 in Göttingen, writes about politics and sports. For him, sports and politics always mix. Currently, Benjamin Bendrich is writing his latest book on empowered athletes in the Olympic system. He is the author of the Handbook for Athlete Representatives (Athleten Deutschland) (2020) and the recent articles on athletes in the anti-doping system and student elite sports (both 2019). Further he wrote a book on elite sports and studies in the U.S. and Germany (2015). Moreover Benjamin Bendrich appeared as a guest on numerous TV and radio shows as well as at conferences. He functioned as a speaker at Play the Game 2022 in Odense, Play the Game 2019 in the U.S., re: publica in Berlin 2017, the NASSH conference in Berkeley (U.S.), and the ISSA conference in Glasgow (Scotland). As an interviewee on national TV and radio he commented on problems of competitive athletes in Germany.
Dajana Eitberger
Luge athlete, winner of the Olympic silver medal in Pyeongchang 2018, presidium member of the independent athlete representation “Athletes Germany”
Was born in 1991 in Ilmenau. She started luge in 2001. Since graduating from the sports high school in Oberhof, she has been part of the German Armed Forces’ sports support group, which she successfully completed in 2014. Since 2013 she has been competing in the World Cup team of the German national team. Dajana Eitberger became European champion in 2015 and won the silver medal in Pyeongchang in 2018. She achieved numerous other national and international podium finishes. In 2020, she gave birth to her son Levi and then found her way back to the ice track. Since 2021, Dajana Eitberger has been a member of the executive committee of the independent athletes’ representative body ‘Athletes Germany’. She voluntarily campaigns here for the protection and perspective of German cadre athletes.
Dr. Tobias Hoffmann
Director of the Bröhan Museum, curator of the exhibition “Otl Aicher. Olympia 72,” August 26 to October 30, 2022
Born 1970 in Munich. Director of the Bröhan Museum and curator of the exhibition “Otl Aicher. Olympia 72”. He studied art history and philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and received his PhD from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart in 2007. After graduating, he worked first as a research assistant at the Neue Sammlung in Munich, then at the Museum für Konkrete Kunst in Ingolstadt, which he directed from 2002 to 2012. In 2013, he was appointed director of the Bröhan Museum. Since then, Tobias Hoffmann has been modernizing the museum’s program and opening it up to exhibitions that combine the historical collection holdings on Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Berlin Secession paintings with themes of art and design up to the present.
Uwe Ritzer
Reporter at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, co-author of “The Games of the Century: Olympia 1972, Terror and the New Germany,” dtv, Munich 2021
Born in 1965 in Franconia, has made a name for himself with investigative research for the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. Since 2005, he has been a correspondent based in Nuremberg in the SZ’s business department. He has twice been awarded the Wächter Prize, the Nannen Prize and the Helmut Schmidt Journalist Prize for his work. Uwe Ritzer was also named Reporter of the Year in 2013. Further he is the co-author of “The Games of the Century: 1972 Olympics, Terror and the New Germany,” dtv, Munich 2021.
Moderation: Okka Gundel
Journalist, television host and author / WDR, ARD
Born in 1974 in East Frisia. The journalist and TV presenter is known from ARD’s Morgenmagazin, Tagesthemen and Sportschau. She also writes essays for the news magazine DER SPIEGEL and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. In the FAS, she herself made her breast cancer illness public in the summer of 2020. As a columnist, she regularly comments on socially relevant phenomena from the world of sports for the radio station Bremen2. Her book “11 Freundin müsst ihr sein” was published to coincide with the 2011 Women’s Soccer World Cup. Okka Gundel is a sociologist (M.A.). She studied French, sports studies, journalism and sociology in Paris, Göttingen and Nice. Afterwards she did a traineeship at WDR. Since 2012, Okka Gundel has been the first ambassador of the “Alzheimer Research Initiative”. She lives in Cologne with her husband and three children.
9:30 p.m.
Get-together
11:00 p.m.
End of the event
Impressions
Photos: Sandra Kühnapfel. © IDZ