The Olympic Stadium in Berlin is the venue for the final of the European Championship. Its history is loaded, if only because Hitler addressed thousands here. The history of the Olympic Stadium in five questions.
1. What role does the Olympic Stadium play in this tournament?
With 75,000 seats, it is the largest stadium. The final will be held here on 14 July. Just like at the 2006 World Cup, when Frenchman Zinedine Zidane headbutted his Italian opponent Marco Materazzi. The lost EC group match with Austria (2-3) was only the first time that the Dutch national team played in the Olympiastadion.
2. There is a Nazi smell around the Olympic Stadium. What is the reason for that?
On August 1, 1936, Adolf Hitler, three years in power, addressed 120,000 spectators here. Countless outstretched arms responded to his opening speech at the Olympic Games. In the end, the black American sprinter Jesse Owens won four gold medals and embarrassed the Nazis in his own country.
3. Nazi architect Albert Speer claimed to have designed the Olympic Stadium. Is that true?
“Speer is one of the most influential storytellers in German history,” says historian Magnus Brechtken (60) of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. Speer’s lie was taken for granted for decades, thanks to Speer’s biographer Joachim Fest and publisher Wolf Siedler. For twenty years, historians have held the consensus that Werner March, not Speer, was the architect of the stadium.
4. Has the air cleared around the Olympic Stadium?
According to Brechtken, the stadium was successfully ‘democratized’. ‘The Stones also performed in 1965 in the Waldbühne theater, in the park next door. Propaganda Minister Goebbels would have turned in his grave.’ Nevertheless, the Olympiapark is still a topic of discussion. Brechtken wants more attention for this piece of history, but: ‘The Olympic grounds do not come first.’ The city has more important places of remembrance, he emphasizes.
5. There are also ‘Nazi sculptures’ at the Olympic Stadium. Is there going to be an iconoclasm?
The monumental sculptures of ‘Aryan’ discus throwers and relay runners commissioned by the Nazis occasionally spark debate. ‘Get rid of these statues,’ wrote SPD senator Peter Strieder in Die Zeit in 2020. Brechtken is in favour of preserving them: ‘It is important to draw attention to traditions and continuities.’
