SPORTS AND SOCIETY 511
was fl attered by this talk, was obviously amenable to the idea.^55 The main
concern of the East German sports director was no longer the prestige
that could be won by the rival West Germany, but that all the eff ort that
had been put into his socialist sports apparatus would have been for noth-
ing. The IOC and the GDR soon offi cially announced their Olympic rec-
onciliation. At the 89th Session of the IOC that was held from 3 to 6 June
1985 in East Berlin, the GDR presented itself as the “prize pupil of the
Olympic idea.”^56 When Samaranch awarded the Olympic Order in gold to
Erich Honecker at the Schauspielhaus on Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, it
was interpreted as an expression of gratitude in advance for the fact that
the GDR would not join in another boycott. In fact, however, this act had
already been planned since October 1983.^57 The pomp and circumstance
surrounding this spectacle nonetheless indicated the great hope held
by the SED leadership that its legitimacy could be boosted through the
Olympics. The SED was not really aware of the crisis in the country, nor
the serious nature of the oppositional movements, most of whom were
not at all impressed by Olympic medals. The boos and whistles directed
at the fi gure-skating icon Katarina Witt when she hosted a rock concert
in Weißensee in 1988 and the parody of Witt in the popular underground
song “Born in the GDR” from the punk band Sandow, which was critical
of the GDR system, illustrate the great extent to which many younger
East Germans saw the Olympic sports events as just a “gigantic piece of
decoration for the government.”^58
West German soccer was also not immune to the eff ects of the East-
West confl ict in the 1980s. The system rivalry reared its head in a rather
blatant way in 1985 when West Germany was named as the host for the
UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) European Soccer Cham-
pionships in 1988. West-Berlin was also in the running to be one of the
cities that would host matches, but it was bumped out in the fi nal plans.
Under the leadership of Hermann Neuberger, the DFB was aware of the
likely resistance to this plan among the three Eastern European members
of the UEFA organization committee, which was why it had suggested
West Berlin as a site for the opening match, but they had not made it a
conditio sine qua non in their proposal to host the championships.^59 Pol-
iticians in West Berlin as well as portions of the press sharply criticized
the DFB’s willingness to concede,^60 resulting in a public reprimand of
Neuberger by the federal government.^61
The outrage that spread throughout West Berlin in early 1985 fed on
the countless attempts that Moscow had made to cut off the city in a va-
riety of ways as part of a strategy to practically and symbolically isolate
West Berlin from West Germany. Here again, sports functioned as an
instrument of political leverage. In 1971, the Soviet Union had already