Jesse Owens Exhibition on the occasion of the World Championships in Athletics in August – The Sports Hero from 1936 returns … to the Berlin Sports Museum – AIMS Marathon Museum of Running – Prof. Dr. Detlef Kuhlmann reports

Jesse Owens, the sports legend (“A Sports Hero”) from the 1936 Summer Olympics in the Berlin Olympic Stadium returns – in an elaborate exhibition compiled by the Berlin Sports Museum – AIMS Marathon Museum of Running – in the Olympic Park (“Haus des Deutschen Sports”, House of German Sports).

The more than 75 objects, including numerous photos that are being presented to the public for the first time, are dedicated to Jesse Owens’ successful participation in the Olympic Games in August 1936 and his three subsequent visits to Berlin after 1945.

Jesse Owens (1913 – 1981) is the first African American track athlete to win four gold medals at a Summer Olympics – in the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay and long jump.

The Berlin exhibition, which is fittingly on display during the World Championships in Athletics in the foyer of the Haus des Deutschen Sports, became possible through a recent large donation from the foundation “DKB Stiftung”. It is the first exhibition in Europe dedicated to the exciting life and great athletic career of Jesse Owens, who was born in Oakville, Alabama as James Cleveland Owens (he received the name “Jesse” by mistake when he started school).

The core of the exhibition shows the aesthetics and drama of the athletic competitions in the Berlin Olympic Stadium, but it also presents the closeness and candour of his encounter with the enthusiastic spectators and his close friendships with his strongest competitors – most of all with his German opponent Luz Long.

The creators of the exhibition have cleverly placed quotes from the sports hero at the top of the photo and text panels, which convey something of Jesse Owens’ personal sporting spirit. With a universal approach, they are still valid today for all kinds of sports, great or small. One example: “Friendships are born on the field of athletic strife and the real gold of competition. Awards become corroded, friends gather no dust.”

The exhibition places Jesse Owens’ Olympic competitions in Berlin in the historical context of the annihilating racial policies and the totalitarian propaganda of the Nazi regime. Jesse Owens’ status as a star athlete (and then even wearing shoes made by a German shoe factory) hindered their intentions . Early November 1935, Jesse Owens considered forgoing participation in Berlin “if there is discrimination against minorities in Germany”.

In an interview with an American journalist that was printed in the German trade magazine, “Der Leichtathlet” (The Track and Field Athlete) in June 1935, he unambiguously stated: “I hope that some day I can serve as an ambassador of goodwill and understanding between the Negros and the White race. Not an ambassador in the political sense, of course, but in an athletic sense.”

Jesse Owens returned to Berlin as such an ambassador several times – for instance, to open the German Sports Federation (DSB)’s fitness initiative “Trimm-Aktion 78” on May 8, 1978 in the Olympic Stadium, which was captured in a photo of him jogging in the Olympic Stadium together with the then president of the DSB, Willi Weyer, and the current honorary president of the DOSB, Manfred von Richthofen.  The “Stadionallee” lane leading to the Berlin Olympic Stadium was renamed “Jesse-Owens-Allee” on March 10, 1984 – where the Landessportbund (Berlin Sports Federation) was and still is located.

The exhibition in the Berlin Sports Museum -AIMS Marathon Museum of Running – will be on display until the end of January 2010, when it will be relocated to the Olympic Village from 1936 in Elstal (Brandenburg). The  opening hours are Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

A German-English catalogue has been created to accompany the exhibit as Volume 14 of “Sporthistorische Blätter” (design: Gerd Steins, copy-editing: Martina Behrendt, translation: Penelope Eifrig. The volume was published by the Forum for Sport History, Friends of the Sports Museum together with the AIMS-Marathon Museum of Running.

The catalogue is available for 3 euros from the Berlin Sports Museum, Hanns-Braun-Str., 14053 Berlin, tel.: 030/3058300, email: sportmuseum-berlin@t-online.de.

We recommend advance booking for groups or special tours.

Prof. Dr. Detlef Kuhlmann in the DOSB press.