532 JUTTA BRAUN
anti-doping legislation that was passed in 2015 made the federal German
justice system responsible for the prosecution of doping violations on a
large scale for the fi rst time.
Despite some criticism about the way in which the state promotes
competitive sports, the role of the state in supporting top-level athletes
remains unquestioned. Not even the confl ict of values between Sieg-
Code—the imperative to win—and the proclaimed goal of a more humane
competitive sports system has changed the fact that “medals are the real
currency in the sports system.”^161 Even unifi ed Germany has continued to
follow the same common international patterns of thought that a success-
ful competitive sports program represents and refl ects the competitive
potential of the country as a whole, despite the fact that the East German
experience has taught quite a diff erent historical lesson in this respect.
The history of sport in East and West Germany has defi nitely been part
of a “geteilte Geschichte” in a shared, yet divided sense. In many respects,
the two countries followed diff erent trajectories, but the permanent com-
petition between the two states in the 1970s and 1980s wove a thick web
of entanglements and reference points on both sides of the Wall. Since
the West Germans kept a close eye on the success and methods used by
the East German teams, the relationship between the two German states
was less asymmetric in this respect than it was in many others. The GDR
turned into the “land of wonder” in competitive sports, but really only in
select Olympic disciplines as it could not keep up with the top-level ath-
letes in international soccer or tennis. In fact, East German fans tended to
rally behind the teams and athletes from West Germany in those sports
in which the East could not compete with the best. At the same time, the
approaches to sport in East and West diff ered considerably. Whereas the
GDR put its money on a centralized system of support for elite sports and
tended to neglect the recreational level, grassroots sports began to blos-
som in the West in the 1970s. The case of recreational sports in unifi ed
Germany, moreover, has shown just how persistent these diff erences can
be. Likewise, the “doubled transformation” can also be traced very clearly
in sport after 1990. The debates over the socialist promotion of sport have
led to debates and changes in the sports system of the FRG, whether it be
in terms of doping or talent scouting. Even today, the former Sportwunder
of the GDR, which stood for both the dangers and horrors of a dictatorship
as well as a supposed lost paradise of optimal athletic performance, is still
a legend within the world of international sport.
Jutta Braun is a research associate at the Center for Contemporary His-
tory (ZZF) in Potsdam and head of the Center for German Sports History