522 JUTTA BRAUN
These delegations were repeatedly bowled over by the “genius” innova-
tions that had been made in the construction of the training facilities and
sports centers.^110 They were also impressed by the vastness and the func-
tional diff erentiation of the sport complexes, even though they already
knew about these features in principle since the Olympic training centers
that were set up in West Germany in the 1980s were rudimentary replicas
of these East German centers. The reestablishment of Olympic training
centers in the East shortly thereafter represented, in certain respects, the
transfer of an old GDR structural concept to West Germany and then back
to East Germany. Naturally, however, some aspects of this system had
been altered to fi t with the way in which West German competitive sports
were organized. The Federal Republic also quickly showed a visible inter-
est in two areas of GDR elite sports that had been kept strictly under wraps
prior to this point: the creative innovations in sports equipment devel-
opment and the “poison labs” (Giftküchen)^111 of the GDR doping system.
The celebrated retainment of the doping laboratory in Kreischa and the
Physical Training and Sports Research Institute (Forschungsinstitut für
Körperkultur und Sport, or FKS) in Leipzig,^112 which were the centers of
doping research and doping practice in the GDR, in the unifi cation treaty
met with staunch criticism, and not just among civil rights activists.^113
At the level of the specifi c sport associations, each individual sports
discipline had to go through its own process of reunifi cation in 1990.
They struggled with the integration of their diff erent league systems in
particular. In the GDR, for example, fourteen teams had played in the
soccer Oberliga. Consequently, the question of how many of the favor-
ite East German teams would be able to play in the First and Second
Bundes liga was a key point of negotiation on the path to soccer unity.
In order to retain as much as possible of the substance of GDR soccer,
the Northeast German Soccer Association (Nordostdeutsche Fußballver-
band, or NOFV), which represented the East German clubs, initially pro-
posed that all the GDR Oberliga teams should be admitted to the national
professional leagues in united Germany. Four of the clubs were supposed
to be admitted to the Bundesliga, and the other ten teams were supposed
to be integrated in the Second Bundesliga. But this proposal met with
stiff resistance in the DFB. In the end, a compromise was reached with
what was called the “two-plus-six rule”: the two best GDR clubs would
become part of the First Bundesliga, while six other East German teams
would join the Second Bundesliga. The rest of the East German teams
had to make do with the amateur leagues, because there was not yet a
third professional league at the time. Accordingly, the Oberliga season
in 1990/91 was much like a “ghost league” representing the best of GDR
soccer for one last time. But, more importantly, it was a contest to see