Flucht und Fluchthilfe im olympischen Sport

In the organizer's words:

Wolfgang Thüne is a sports star in the GDR. Thüne won several medals in apparatus gymnastics at the Olympic Games and World Championships. As a top athlete, he enjoyed a high level of sporting training and privileges.

However, this did not stop him from leaving the GDR after the 1975 European Championships in Bern. Thüne put all his eggs in one basket for his escape: Eberhard Gienger. With the help of his West German competitor, the then world gymnastics champion, he manages to escape across the Swiss-German border.

However, Gienger's escape aid only became public knowledge decades later. However, the reaction of the SED regime to Thünes' escape was not long in coming. The army athlete was sentenced in absentia to several years in prison for desertion. Thüne was also targeted by the Ministry for State Security (MfS). Wolfgang Thüne's name is listed in the so-called ZOV Sportverräter, a MfS surveillance organization that collects all information on former sports fugitives in order to track down escape routes and helpers.

The event would like to use Thüne and Gienger's escape operation as a reminder of repression in the SED state and a forgotten chapter of German-German history. After an introductory lecture by historian Dr. René Wiese (Zentrum deutsche Sportgeschichte) on escapes in GDR sport, Andreas Käckell (NDR) will talk to Wolfgang Thüne and Eberhard Gienger.