by Herbie Sykes
Remember the aunt and uncle I told you about, the ones with the cigars in Flöha? My grandmother said she wanted to visit them during the summer holidays, to see her sister again. She asked me if I wanted to go with her, and I said I did. I’d never met them before, and I’d always liked the letters Uncle Herbert had sent. So I wanted to meet them and I guess it was a kind of adventure for me as well.
My aunt and uncle were very nice, but they were quite poor compared to us. I was surprised because they didn’t have a lot of the things we took for granted, but they were very nice and they did their best to give us the best of the things they did. I was fine there, but I remember thinking, ‘It’s OK because I don’t have to stay very long, and then I’ll go back to my own world.’
The problem was that they only had a tiny flat, and they didn’t have anywhere for me to sleep. A divorced woman lived upstairs from them, though, and her name was Annemarie Müller. She was a lovely person, and she had two sons called Rainer and Stephan. Rainer was away with the army, so I slept in his bed.
DIETER
I had an old school friend who lived on the next street to us, about 100 metres away. His name was Rainer Müller, and I used to pass his flat on the way to get the milk from the farmer each morning.
RAINER
Dieter and I had been best friends at school, but we pretty much went our separate ways after that. I remember his getting his racing bike for his fourteenth birthday, and after that he was focused on his cycling. I was more interested in football, and then of course we’d both started work. We’d still chat when we bumped into each other, but not often because I went off to the army and he was always off somewhere racing.
SYLVIA
One morning I was up in the bedroom doing nothing much. I was just gazing out of the window, and I saw a guy walk past. He glanced up at the window, so I said hello.
DIETER
One day as I was walking down Rainer’s street I saw his girlfriend, Brigitte, leaning out of his bedroom window. I was surprised because he was away on military service, but I didn’t think much of it.
As I passed underneath the flat she shouted, ‘Grüss Gott’, but that was a southern German greeting. People from Flöha never used it because we said ‘Guten Tag’. So I knew it couldn’t have been Brigitte, so I did a double take and I realised that it wasn’t. There was a girl in Rainer’s bedroom who looked almost identical to Brigitte, but it was somebody else. I thought, ‘That’s really strange! Who’s that girl in Rainer’s bedroom?’
DIETER
Two days later I went down to the river with a cycling friend of mine. Rainer’s little brother was there with the girl from the bedroom window.
SYLVIA
It was hot when Stephan and I went down to the river. I had my swimming costume on, and we just stood there paddling in the water, playing with stones and suchlike. Then the boy I’d seen passing the window appeared, and he was with another boy. The other one started joking around, like boys will. He pinched my shoe and made it float on the river, just to make fun of me. He was a bit full of himself, and in the end I got a bit fed up with it.
Anyway, he gave me my shoe back eventually, and we started talking. I wasn’t sure about the mouthy one to be honest, but the boy I’d seen passing the flat was nice. He didn’t say very much, but he was courteous and I could tell he was quite shy. Before they left he asked me if I wanted to play badminton with him some time, and I said I would. He seemed like a kind person, and he was very handsome. I liked him, and I was bored of spending all my time with Stephan and the old people.
DIETER
We played around for a while, and then we started chatting. I could tell that she was from the west straight away. She had a yellow bikini on, and then there were her shoes. I’d been to the west in 1957 and I’d seen shoes like that. They were made by Salamander, and you couldn’t get them in the GDR. The colours were different, the style was different, and the quality was totally different.
To be honest I didn’t know anything about girls, and if I’d been alone I wouldn’t have had the courage to speak with her.
SYLVIA
When I went back to my great-aunt’s house they asked what I’d been doing, and I told them about the boys we’d met. Annemarie said, ‘Oh that’s Dieter, Rainer’s friend! Yes, he’s a very nice boy …’
Later in the week he called round and asked if I wanted to play badminton with him. I said yes, and we played in the street in front of the house. He paid me a compliment, and I could tell that it took a lot of courage for him. When you’re that age you don’t really know who you are, so little things like that are really important, you know?
Anyway, he was very nice, and we had fun playing badminton. Before I went home I said to my great-uncle, ‘If he asks you for my address you can give it to him!’
RAINER
I came home at the weekend, but I couldn’t sleep in my room because there was a girl there!
SYLVIA
I was sure I’d be getting a letter. Absolutely sure of it.
DIETER
Normal families didn’t have telephones back then, no. Businesses had them, but the joke went that if you had access to a phone you were probably Stasi. So when Sylvia went home I went to see her uncle and asked for her address. If I’d known she was only fourteen I wouldn’t have asked, but she looked older, sixteen or something.
SYLVIA
I got home from school one day and my mum said, ‘You’ve got a letter with a GDR postmark!’ I wasn’t used to getting letters, and I knew straight away it would be from Dieter. I ran straight up to my room and read it on my bed.
* For reasons that will become apparent, none of Sylvia’s letters to Dieter have survived.
DIETER
It wasn’t because I thought we would eventually be together, nothing like that. You don’t think like that at nineteen, but I’d enjoyed spending time with her. I’d never really spent time alone with a girl before, and I liked it. I liked her as well, so I just decided to write.
DIETER
The GDR hosted the Cycling World Championships that summer. The idea was to celebrate Täve, and they knew that if he won a third rainbow jersey at home it would be a great coup.
They wanted to have the Worlds, but you couldn’t have the amateur race without the professional one. The problem was that communist doctrine was against professional sport, but for that week they set aside their ideological opposition and welcomed the professionals with open arms. They said they wanted to demonstrate the beauty of the country and the ideals of socialism to the world but in reality it was all about using sport – and specifically Täve’s fame – for propaganda purposes at home. It was classic GDR.
The race was the Sachsenring motor racing circuit, and of course the whole country wanted to see him win. On Friday I went to have a look with a friend of mine who had lived in the west, and I saw a big advertising hoarding for Torpedo, a West German ’pro team from Schweinfurt. My friend knew some of the riders from his time there, and we got talking to their mechanic. He gave me a Torpedo cap and bidon, and I was really proud of them. You couldn’t get things like that in the GDR, so to have them was really special.
The weather was awful the following day, but the crowds were massive. It seemed like the whole country had come to watch Täve.
DIETER
It was the most famous race in the history of GDR cycling, and one of the most important sporting moments. What happened was that a Belgian named Willy Vandenberghen broke away. Täve was the strongest in the race, and on the final lap he bridged across with another GDR rider, Bernhard Eckstein. When they reached Vandenberghen, Eckstein attacked to try to force him to chase. The idea was that Vandenberghen would wear himself out getting back on, and Täve would be able to ride away and win another rainbow jersey.
It all seemed simple, but when Eckstein attacked Vandenberghen just sat up. He knew that if he chased he would be beaten anyway, and so he played the only card he had. He called Täve�
��s bluff because he reasoned there was a chance that Täve’s ambition would get the better of him. If he did he might just chase Eckstein down himself, because everything was geared around him winning a third world championship. He was the team captain, and Vandenberghen reasoned that the idea had probably been for Eckstein to sacrifice himself for him. Vandenberghen figured that if he did nothing then Täve might be tempted to chase Eckstein down, and that if he did he’d be able to sit on his wheel and follow. That would have left him the freshest, and besides it was the only chance he had to win.
However, Täve knew that if he dragged Vandenberghen across the GDR risked getting nothing, so they both just watched Eckstein ride away. The upshot of it all was that Eckstein won the world championship unopposed, and Täve beat Vandenberghen in the sprint for silver.
Eckstein was the champion, but the way the race had played itself out made Täve even more popular. The media portrayed it as an act of extreme altruism on his part. It’s true that Täve was a good sportsman, but it’s also true that it was a pretty standard bike racing decision. There was nothing wrong in that, but Täve hadn’t set out to sacrifice himself for Eckstein. It had been a win-win situation for the team, and as it turned out it favoured Eckstein instead of Täve.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
[…]
Up front Willy Vandenberghen, a world-class rider, was fighting for the victory. At first glance the mighty Belgian seemed to hold all the cards. However, he was trumped because somebody else, namely our Täve, had the better hand. It was that of the stronger team and the better collective. In the final analysis two boys, each clad in the white jersey with the black and red rings, came out on top.
When Willy Vandenberghen saw the two white jerseys at his side, he knew the game was up, and even his desperate sprint for second place failed. Thanks to Eckstein and Schur, the amateur title went to the GDR for the third time in succession. Thanks also to Günter Lörke, Erich Hagen, Lothar Höhne and Egon Adler, who selflessly helped to prepare the triumph of all triumphs.
Over the past three days, West German journalists, visiting the GDR as guests of the World Cycling Championships, tried to launch a major offensive against the sporting movement of our republic. On Saturday Axel Springer’s tabloid Bild-Zeitung even raged that this was the last World Championship which would take place in the GDR.
Such hopes can only be described as wishful thinking. Now, as the GDR celebrates its triumph, we can only pity the West German journalists. Their attack has ground to a halt in the volley of a new triumph of the socialist sports movement.
Reprinted from ‘Triumph of triumphs’, 14 August 1960
DIETER
The issue was that the journalists – who were all party members – turned it completely on its head. Neues Deutschland used it as an example of the moral virtue of socialism, but it wasn’t at all. It was just a bike race, and one of ours had won it fair and square. Nobody gave Eckstein much credit for it, because it was all about Täve and the glory of socialism. That wasn’t Täve’s fault, but I was starting to understand that everything was a propaganda exercise.
KLAUS
It’s true that there was no sports journalist in the world whose work was as politicised as the GDR sports journalist. We didn’t choose for it to be like that, but you have to understand what was happening. The FRG and its journalists had ambitions to be the only legitimate German state, and that’s the way they portrayed themselves. Obviously our party had to fight against that, and so that’s what we did.
It was a political fight. It was about our fight for international recognition, and part of that was having our own sports teams.
DIETER
I thought my new Torpedo cap was cool, so I wore it for training. They told me I had to take it off, because it was contrary to socialist principles. I thought, ‘That doesn’t make sense! You welcome the professionals when it suits you, but now you’re getting stroppy with me because I’m wearing one of their caps!’
In September I rode the national team time trial championship with Wismut, and we won it. Suddenly everything seemed to be going well. I was nineteen, I was already riding with the champions, and I was earning 350 marks a month plus my prizes. People like Täve and Eckstein were getting much more, but that was normal because they were the best. And besides, normal working people were getting paid 1.30 marks an hour, about 250 marks a month.
SYLVIA
At first we’d write about every two weeks, and the letters were very innocent. We’d write about music, the books we liked reading, I’d ask him about his cycling and so on. I had a much busier social life than him, with more friends and more things to do. He was busy training, and he was a shy person anyway. He wrote that he wasn’t one for going out dancing, going to bars, those things.
At first I had to show my parents the letters, but that was fine. They didn’t have any problems with the fact that we were writing, and nor with the fact that he was five years older than me. After all he lived in a different country, so it wasn’t as if I was going to come to any harm.
DIETER
Thousands were leaving every day now, and the population just seemed to be dwindling all the time. Everyone either had a relative or a friend who had gone.
You had the sensation that something had to happen because otherwise there would be nothing left. It seemed like there was just less and less of everything. There were fewer people, and those that were left seemed more and more disillusioned.
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
As communicated by the General Secretariat of the German Cycling Federation, former president Werner Scharch, has defected. He has abandoned his wife and children, betrayed the Republic and is currently seeking asylum in Austria. The reasons for his humanly indecent and politically treacherous act are to be found in his profound moral decay.
Recently Scharch had been consuming more and more alcohol, and had sought relationships with dubious women. This led to irreconcilable differences between him and the athletes and coaches during the Olympic Games in Rome, and they demanded his immediate resignation. Instead of embarking upon a detoxification programme as was suggested to him, he continued to entertain relations with dubious West German women, who played him into the hands of agents of the Bonn government.
Reprinted from ‘Scharch betrayed the Republic’, 16 October 1960
WERNER
I don’t intend to give all the reasons for my having defected from the GDR. They are of a personal nature, but one of them must be revealed. It concerns the status of our sportsmen, and it brought me face-to-face with a serious case of conscience.
The Olympic charter provides a clear definition of the amateur status of sportsmen. In order to establish who may participate at the games, the International Cycling Union instituted three categories: amateurs, independents and professionals. The status of each is unequivocally defined, but in recent years the states of the east have created an entirely new category of their own: the state professional. I mention this because in these countries amateurs are treated as professionals. They receive a fee for their performances, and this represents a flagrant transgression of their amateur status.
In point of fact, it is on account of these problems that I resigned my post. It is imperative that a solution be found for, in the long run, the position of athletes in the countries of the east will become intolerable to integral amateur status.
On a strictly sporting basis the situation has already become untenable. In the present conditions amateurs riding for countries where professionalism exists are competing against racers from the east who are in fact professionals. Schur, for example, could compete on equal terms with the greatest champions among the professionals, and has no difficulty in beating young competitors who are still genuine amateurs. Obviously this situation is inadmissible.
In western countries, professional riders belong to a company, represent a brand or a group of ultra-trained sportsmen. They are paid according to what they yield, or to their standing. In the GDR the racers belong to a club which pays them a fee. Schur, Hagen and Eckstein earn 600 to 1,200 marks per month, a large sum of money by our standards. What is more their housing is provided and they are paid bonuses. These can reach up to 7,000 marks when they win an international title. The fact that some of them — Schur, for example – carry out very serious studies makes no difference, since the rules state that student scholarships must not exceed 300 marks a month.
I raise no objection to the fact that they receive money, but they ought to be classed with, and compete against, the professional riders of other countries. Besides, this would be in their own interests.33
NEUES DEUTSCHLAND
ORGAN DES ZENTRALKOMITEES DER SOZIALISTISCHEN EINHEITSPARTEI DEUTSCHLANDS
The best of our republic’s road cyclists, recently returned from China and including twice world champion Täve Schur and current world champion Bernard Eckstein, have issued the following statement from the presidium of the GDR Cycling Federation in respect to the betrayal of the former president of the Federation.
