The Sportvereinigung Dynamo () (Dynamo Sports Association) was the sport association of the security agencies (Volkspolizei, Ministry for State Security, fire department and customs) of former East Germany.
The association was founded on 27 March 1953 and was headquartered in Hohenschönhausen in East Berlin. From the date of its inception, the President of SV Dynamo was the Minister of State Security Erich Mielke. The Minister of State Security served as First chairman of the association, while the Ministry of the Interior provided the Second chairman of the association. The Head of the Volkspolizei Karl Maron was elected as the first Second Chairman at the founding conference. The financial and material resources of the SV Dynamo were almost exclusively provided by the Ministry of State Security. Erich Mielke was dismissed as First chairman in December 1989. His position was not replaced. SV Dynamo was dissolved in 1990.
Dynamo was set up following the multi-sports club model developed in the Soviet Union and adopted throughout Eastern Europe. From the beginning it had an overtly political as well as sporting agenda and its many successes were always portrayed as a triumph of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). SV Dynamo was dissolved during the Peaceful Revolution. The association had a membership of over 280,000 members at its height. Athletes of the association enjoyed considerable success both in national and international competitions, winning for example more than 200 Olympic medals. After German reunification in 1990 the systematic doping of Dynamo athletes from 1971 until 1989 was revealed by the German media. Doping was done under the supervision of the Stasi and with full backing of the government.
Organization The SV Dynamo was divided into fifteen regional units, corresponding to the fifteen regional districts of the East Germany. Within each regional unit individual sports communities (SG) and sports clubs (SC) existed, with each sports community or club specializing in different disciplines. 290 sections were included in the association, such as SG Dynamo Dresden (football), SC Dynamo Hoppegarten (judo, shooting sports, parachuting), the SC Dynamo Klingenthal (Nordic skiing), SG Dynamo Luckenwalde (wrestling), SG Dynamo Potsdam (rowing and canoe sprint), SG Dynamo Weißwasser (ice hockey) and the SG Dynamo Zinnwald in Altenberg (biathlon, bobsleigh, luge, skeleton).
The most famous sports club of the SV Dynamo was probably the SC Dynamo Berlin, which offered most Olympic disciplines. The sports system was not designed for transfers, but on schedule. The athletes had to be viewed in their own country. Administrators and coaches from Dynamo Berlin were often sent to support their development. The district organizations, which bore the names of the districts they served, always wore the initials SV Dynamo.
For the training, there existed a basic plan. If the children themselves are not good at school, they were excluded from the training. The emphasis has been respected that the athletes had to pursue themselves the sporting ideology, because otherwise no success would have been guaranteed. Each year, the best Dynamo-athlete were voted. Few could win 50,- M when they themselves were those who chose the sportswoman/ sportsman of the year. Dynamo employed a planning cycle that set out the club's objectives for the upcoming four-year period.
Politics The sports association was anti-fascist and communist in nature. Among its founders were former concentration camps prisoners and communist leaders in the fight against National socialists and Social Democrats during the era of the Weimar Republic.
Visits to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, among other places, were common among the youth athletes of its teams. The names of murdered and deceased communists were given as honorary titles for the constituent clubs under the sports society, for example: SG Dynamo "Feliks E. Dzierzynski" Dresden or SG Dynamo "Dr. Richard Sorge" Erfurt.
There were also many hymns and odes written for SV Dynamo. Gerhard Kube, Helmut Baierl and Kurt Barthel wrote many poets about the society and its role as a builder of national sports.
The Central Management Office () (BdZL) of SV Dynamo had 1,400 members in 1989. A large majority of 1,000 were members of the Ministry of the Interior (MdI) and a smaller portion of 180 were members of the Ministry of State Security (MfS). Stasi Major General Heinz Pommer was the head of the BdZL from 1982 to 1989. The association was dissolved in early 1990.
SV Dynamo districts
The organization of the society was along district lines as follows:
Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Rostock Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Neubrandenburg Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Schwerin Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Magdeburg Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Potsdam Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Frankfurt Oder Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation East Berlin Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Cottbus, Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Halle Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Leipzig Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Erfurt Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Gera Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Suhl Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Dresden Sportvereinigung Dynamo District - Organisation Karl-Marx-Stadt
The measure of the flags of the district clubs is 2.8 × 1.5 m, with, of course, the emblem of the SV with the name of the club in white and at the canton the DTSB arms.
Members
Key to East German sporting success was a pyramid system with schoolchildren being assessed for athletic potential and the best (typically the top 2.5%) in each school-year being offered specialised coaching. A small fraction of those would go on to become the top adult athletes of the next generation. This model was initially derided in the West as a "sausage machine" but it has since been adopted in modified form by Australia, France, Spain and others with thousands of children being educated at specialised (often residential) sports schools rather than going through the normal high school system. Overall, 3,7 million athletes were in the GDR at the German Sports federation (DTSB) registered in many other successful clubs in 1989.
+ Members by yearSV Dynamo Almanach 1977YearAdultsChildrenTotal195323,162 none23,162195555,991 10,87466,856195890,160 18,846109,0061961 105,53042,822148,3521966118,651 54,691173,3061970131,752 74,266206,0181972139,013 85,295224,3081974144,356 93,071237,4271975146,127 96,666242,7931976148,05499,337247,3911983170,000110,000280,000
Trainers Most coaches were also teachers or had other specific occupations. They were all in principle to ease members' fears before starting competitions. To overcome any problems developing, they could deal with them early (at the source) in order to eradicate this. At the same time, they were also the guardians of morality.
+Trainers by yearSV Dynamo AlmanachYearLevel 1Level 2Level 3/4Total1964nonenonenone99891965nonenonenone9673196667852466136210613196767172476148910682196870782731171211521196975363009191512460197073213211205812590197172153412211912746197273343598258013512197373943791301614201197411358390630981836219751181239493407191681976 123694219352420112
Doping controversies SV DynamoPain And Injury in Sport: Social And Ethical Analysis, Section III, Chapter 7, Page 111, by Sigmund Loland, Berit Skirstad, Ivan Waddington, Published by Routledge in 2006, ASIN: B000OI0HZG was especially singled out as a center for doping in the former East Germany. Many former club officials and some athletes found themselves charged after the dissolution of the country. A special page on the internet was created by doping victims trying to gain justice and compensation, listing people involved in doping at the club, the so-called Dynamo Liste.
State-endorsed doping began with the Cold War when every eastern bloc gold was an ideological victory. From 1974, Manfred Ewald, the head of the GDR's sports federation, imposed blanket doping. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the country of 17 million collected nine gold medals. Four years later the total was 20 and in 1976 it doubled again to 40. Ewald was quoted as having told coaches, "They're still so young and don't have to know everything." He was given a 22-month suspended sentence, to the outrage of his victims.
Often, doping was carried out without the knowledge of the athletes, some of them as young as ten years of age. It is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse, one of them is Rica Reinisch, a triple Olympic champion and world record-setter at the Moscow Games in 1980, has since suffered numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts. Athletes like Renate Vogel, silver medalist at the 1972 Olympics in the swimming competitions, were told the injections were vitamins but failed to believe the explanation and quit her sport.
Two former SC Dynamo Berlin club doctors, Dieter Binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 80, and Bernd Pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in East-Berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances. Binus was sentenced in August, Pansold in December 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984.
Virtually no East German athlete ever failed an official drug test, though Stasi files show that many did, indeed, produced positive tests at Kreischa, the Saxon laboratory (German:Zentrale Dopingkontroll-Labor des Sportmedizinischen Dienstes) that was at the time approved by the International Olympic Committee, now called the Institute of Doping Analysis and Sports Biochemistry (IDAS).
The manufacturer of the drugs in former East Germany, Jenapharm, still found itself involved in numerous lawsuits from doping victims, being sued by almost 200 former athletes, as of 2005, fifteen years after the end of East Germany. Many of the substances handed out were, even under East German law, illegal.
Former athletes of SC Dynamo Berlin who publicly admitted to doping, accusing their coaches: Daniela Hunger Andrea Pollack Katharina Bullin Andreas Krieger Former athletes of SC Dynamo Berlin disqualified for doping: Ilona Slupianek (Ilona Slupianek tested positive along with three Finnish athletes at the 1977 European Cup, becoming the only East German athlete ever to be convicted of doping). Based on the self-admission by Pollack, the United States Olympic Committee asked for the redistribution of gold medals won in the 1976 Olympics. Despite court rulings in Germany that substantiate claims of systematic doping by some East German swimmers, the IOC executive board announced that it has no intention of revising the Olympic record books. This is an understandable decision as it could otherwise trigger a flood of such claims involving former eastern bloc athletes. In rejecting the American petition on behalf of its women's medley relay team in Montreal and a similar petition from the British Olympic Association on behalf of Sharron Davies, the IOC made it clear that it wanted to discourage any such appeals in the future.
Achievements Olympics Athletes of SV Dynamo won approximately 215 Olympic medals in a 37 years period. A review by SV Dynamo leaders after the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich found that athletes of SV Dynamo won so many medals for East Germany that the sports association would have been placed on a ninth to tenth place on the unofficial list if the sports association had been a national team.
World championships