DAY 226 - COLOGNE AND FRANKFURT

5 December, 2011—UXB

Total: 2177 miles–4,663,001 steps

It was an early start from Strasbourg to travel by train, first to Frankfurt and then to Cologne. There was some disruption on the line as a 1.8 tonne British bomb had been found in the Rhine and the town had to be evacuated whilst the bomb disposal team made it safe.

The train delays around Koblenz set an interesting tone for the day as they reminded me first, of the obvious point, that the 10 feet long bomb was exposed because the Rhine was at its lowest level for 65 years as a result of an extensive drought caused by climate change; second, of the brutality of war that such an enormous device would be dropped in a heavily populated civilian area and had it exploded would have killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands (of course accepting that the people of London and Coventry would recount the same experience); third, of the treasure of peace where, as a result of institutions, through which we can have equally vigorous political disagreements with our European counterparts, without resorting to such acts and finally, thanksgiving at least that this device did not detonate either in 2011 or 1944.

Having built in generous provision for train delays, I arrived in Frankfurt an hour earlier than planned and so decided to walk down to the European Central Bank, which I had visited a number of times before. There the square outside had been given over to the ‘Occupy Movement’, who were protesting against the……….well not entirely sure what, but they were angry. One of the most popular booklets on sale in Europe is a small book by Stephane Hessel called ‘Time for Outrage’. Hessel is a remarkable man, a diplomat, French Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor who helped frame the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2010 at the age of 93 he wrote a seminal essay espousing the ‘lost art’ of non-violent protest. It had an initial print run of 6000 copies and has now sold over 3.5 million. I have read the essay a number of times on my trip since it was first pointed out to me in Slovenia and find myself in agreement with analysis, but differing dramatically in his proposed socialist solutions. Yet this criticism is to miss the point; for what he is urging is not a prescriptive solution to our problems, but that we should at least care enough to want to find a solution. The fact that this essay, which is currently mobilising hundreds of thousands of young people across the world, was written by a 93 year old is, I feel, one of the most inspirational subliminal messages of the essay.

I arrived at the offices of the German Olympic Federation to be met by Bernard Schwank, Director of High Performance Sport, Johannes Curtius and Kristian Klaue. The meeting had been set up at short notice, thanks to the persistence of Astrid Ladd and Julia Mueller at the British Embassy in Berlin, and I was delighted to have the opportunity to talk about the truce with such a highly influential team from one of the largest sports federations in the world. We met in the Willi Daume Conference Room (picture) and I was fascinated to learn of the role which he had played in the 1981 Baden-Baden Olympic Congress, which was held at a time when the Olympic Games were on the brink of ending following the boycotts of the Moscow and Los Angeles Games and only one bidder had been received for the following Games. It is hard to think of the Olympic Games being in crisis, as they seem today to be a by-word for sponsorship and broadcasting deals, but they were. The driving force for change came from the athletes themselves and resulted in the most dramatic change in the modern era, which was the end of the division between amateur and professional sports  and a broadening of the number of sports which qualified for the Games. The scale of these national Olympic organisations means that to provide leadership is to try and ‘herd cats’ for there are 16 State level organisations, 60 sporting organisations and 19 special associations all wanting to defend their interests and to have their voice heard. To give direction to such a body requires a special type of leadership and Bernard believed that Willi Daume had set the standard at the time when the German and indeed the International Olympic organisation had needed it most.

There is an understandable nervousness about mixing politics and the Olympics in Germany, as it was the scene of the Nazi exploitation of the 1936 Berlin Games, which of course spectacularly backfired on Hitler thanks to Jesse Owens, and then of course the terrorist attack at the Munich Games in 1972. The instinct to ‘stick to sport’ is an understandable one, but I think it is wrong.   After all the German people were as much the victims of the Nazi regime as the rest of Europe and that whilst some think that the role as a catalyst certainly the Second World War is their legacy I think that the German people’s courage in ending the Cold War is even more significant for it caused civilisation itself to step back from the abyss.  I don’t think that I managed to convince anyone round the table, but I for one, would love to see another Olympic Congress which could be convened to consider how the modern Olympics could further their aim of building peace and reconciliation through sport and of course through the Olympic truce. The meeting ended on a lighter note, with a photo opportunity with ‘Trimmy’, the national mascot for sport in Germany.

It was then back to the train station for a super fast rail connection up to Cologne and a visit to the Olympic & Sport Museum of Germany and a meeting with the press. My host at the museum was Frank Durr, the Director of the Museum. Prior to the tour I had an extensive and thought provoking interview with Susanne Rohlfing—it is always gratifying when journalists take the time to research the issue before they meet and explain the direction they would like the story to take—Sussane was exemplary of all that is great about the profession and as we ended, I felt I had understood more of the context for the truce as a result.

That learning experience was to be built upon by my tour of the museum and discussion with Frank. I had not appreciated, for instance, that there was an initial German reluctance to participate in the Olympic Games because they did not think that sport should be competitive, but rather went for collective sports activities. They saw that competitive sports were an ‘English’ invention and it was something which they disapproved of because their idea was that they wanted to brining the nascent nation together under its own identity and working together rather than competing with each other. I had never heard of this perspective on sport before and I don’t think Michael Schumacher, Franz Beckenbauer or Boris Becker had either.

I promised to follow up on two ideas which had come from my meeting with Frank—the first was the idea of hosting a joint exhibition highlighting German and British sporting competition and the second was an observation that Britain was one of the few major Olympic countries not to have an Olympic Museum; we have a National Football Museum in Preston, but no Olympic museum—surely this is something which must be corrected as part of the legacy of the 2012 Games. In fact even better, make it the first Paralympic and Olympic Museum and base it at Stoke Mandeville!

One the way back the trains were again in chaos, but this again afforded me a very special opportunity, which was to visit Cologne Cathedral which had remained standing despite being hit by over 70 bombs during the saturation bombing of the city by the Allied forces in WWII using the ‘1000 bomber raids’ to reduce the city to rubble. Over 1.5 million bombs were dropped on Cologne alone and over 20,000, overwhelmingly civilians, were killed. I sat quietly in the cathedral and lit a candle for peace there. Even if it was retaliatory, there can be no satisfaction in such indiscriminate destruction, war brutalises us all. There are no national winners for it is humanity that always loses.  Moreover, at times in the future when as a result of political and economic climate change, droughts of goodwill may reveal unexploded devices of grievance and prejudice and they will need to be defused with great care and understanding, for they may be outdated, but they are still capable of reeking calamitous harm if not handled correctly.