530 JUTTA BRAUN
the degree of organization in sport in the former GDR, scholars now
agree that the offi cial statistics on the recreational side of the DTSB are
not a realistic refl ection of the actual involvement of the broader popu-
lation in organized sport activities. This has to do with the high number
of obligatory members who were counted in the statistics but did not
actually take part in sport, as well as the constant political pressure that
was put on the association to report steadily increasing membership fi g-
ures.^151 In a comparative study, the Ministry for Education, Youth and
Sport (MBJS) of the state of Brandenburg determined that participation
in organized associational sports in Brandenburg had increased signifi -
cantly since the end of the GDR. The study was based in part on corrected
GDR statistics for Potsdam, Cottbus, and Frankfurt/Oder, which counted
about two hundred thousand recreational athletes, accounting for about
7 to 8 percent of the population. The statistics for 2002, on the other
hand, indicated that participation had climbed to 10.8 percent, and the
fi gures for 2012 show that 12.7 percent of the population was involved in
organized sport.^152 Despite this generally positive development, there is
still a shortfall. Recreational sports in Germany are still strikingly divided
along a clear East-West split.^153 Whereas between 28 and 40 percent of
the population in the old federal states belonged to sports associations
in 2012, only between 13 and 17 percent of the population in the former
East did the same—less than half compared to the West.
Scholars have still not come to an agreement about the underlying
causes for this asymmetry between East and West. Some have rightly
pointed to the social turbulence experienced within East German society
that was unleashed by the reunifi cation process. When the large facto-
ries disappeared, for example, the social attachment to their sports clubs
and organizations went with them. According to a sports science analy-
sis conducted by Jürgen Baur and Sebastian Braun, almost a fi fth of the
active members of sports clubs in the GDR were no longer involved in
organized sports after 1989. Many of them continued their athletic activ-
ity within a more informal context (44.7 percent) or ended their athletic
commitment altogether (34.7 percent).^154 That said, the “turbulence in
organized sport over the course of the transformation process”^155 that
was pointed out by scholars around the turn of the twenty-fi rst century
can no longer fully account for the continued “diff erence in unity” on its
own.^156 Rather, long-term cultural infl uences, such as the fundamental
diff erences in present-day associational culture in East and West, also
need to be taken into account. For example, some scholars have pos-
ited that widespread “passive membership” in the West, whereby many
family members belong to the same local sports club although not all of
them actively participate in sports, was not a common practice in the