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Son Chee Chung - Marathon Olympic Champion 1936 Berlin ©Gerd Steins, Berlin
The Berlin Sports Museum and its AIMS ‚Marathoneum‘
The Berlin Sports Museum is located in the Olympic Park Berlin and is the oldest and largest of its kind in Germany. The Berlin Sports Museum functions as a universal museum for all sports.
As a public museum, it is run under the auspices of the Senate Department for the Interior and Sport.
Since 1994, the Berlin Sports Museum has focussed on the collection and documentation of the development of running worldwide.
Following a request by the Berlin Marathon and the Berlin Half Marathon at the 9th AIMS World Congress in Macao in 1994, AIMS (Association of International Marathons and Road Races) appointed the Berlin Sport Museum to be the "AIMS Marathon Museum of Running."
For the past year, the activities and collections of the Berlin Sports Museum that pertain to the international running movement are now being advertised under the protected name AIMS "Marathoneum."
A high-ranking AIMS delegation visited the Berlin Sports Museum/AIMS Marathon Museum of Running in January 2008, honouring their accomplishments and delivering a check over $ 10,000. Tomas Härtel (State Secretary for the Department for the Interior and Sport) stated:
"Let me tell you that 'Sport City' is an honorary title that the people in Berlin are very proud about, because in few words it provides a good description of just what it is. Sport City, you see, means not only a great number of successful athletes, but also a strong ratio of sports fields and gyms to the population, as well as a kind of liveliness in the whole sport scene, many regional, national and international sports events and – as we are becoming more and more aware – it also provides a permanent home for the preservation of great moments and eras in sport history. For this reason, it is with great pleasure that Berlin is privileged to be home to the exemplary Sports Museum, and I am – let me say- "proud as a peacock" that the museum incorporates the AIMS Marathon Museum of Running."
The Berlin Sports Museum is financially supported by AIMS and receives organisational help from the 430 AIMS-members, the members of the German association of event organizers German Road Races (GRR) and the "Forum for Sport History – the support association of the Berlin Sports Museum."
The AIMS members are asked to donate artefacts and souvenirs from their events to the AIMS "Marathoneum".
Even the world's best marathon runners, who are honoured every year at the AIMS gala in Athens, supply the "Marathoneum" with valuable items from their careers.
The "Dr. David Martin Collection" is, so far, the most valuable and largest donation to the Berlin Sports Museum. The whole collection, with a total weight of approximately 1.5 tons, was transported in 85 moving boxes and in 2 separate shipments from Atlanta (USA) over the Atlantic to Berlin.
Dr. David Martin donated his "life work" that included an extensive collection of artefacts as well as more than 500 volumes of specialist literature. He was a professor of physiology, and for decades he was a member of the AIMS board. He also coached the US long distance running team.
In addition to that collection, the "Henryk Paskal Collection" (Poland) and the "Wim Verhoorn Collection" (Netherlands) emphasize the international character of the whole endeavour.
At the 21st AIMS World Congress in Athens in November 2016, the "Marathoneum" was introduced via a PowerPoint presentation. The delegates of the AIMS Congress received the first (in English) "Marathoneum Document: Runners and Walkers" as the first in a series looking at the development of the running movement worldwide.
In return, the race organizers in attendance donated a huge array of items from their races. The collected material was so extensive that it had to be shipped to Berlin.
Like the AIMS members, the organizers of the German Road Races association (GRR) also provide items from their events to the Berlin Sports Museum for documentation. Therefore, the collection is constantly growing with new objects from the areas of running and track & field.
The Berlin Sports Museum is due to move into a new exhibition facility in the grandstands at the May Field (Maifeld) in 2019. Underneath the Bell Tower at the Maifeld in the Olympic Park, new and modern exhibition halls are being erected with a view of the Olympic Stadium.
The new exhibition halls of the Berlin Sports Museum are built next to and over the Olympic Marathon Course from 1936, as the runners of the 1936 marathon ran through the building!
It probably is the only Sports Museum worldwide that is located on top of over a marathon course. In viewing distance of the pending permanent exhibition, a bronze statue was erected for Son Kee Chung (winner of the Olympic Marathon from 1936) in December 2016.
AIMS members who have not yet been able to donate anything – or were not able to attend the 21st AIMS Congress in 2016 – are kindly asked to send items from their events to Berlin, such as flyers, posters, medals, certificates, race numbers, souvenirs, etc.
Address: AIMS Marathoneum in the Berlin Sports Museum / Hans-Braun-Strasse / Olympia park Berlin /14053 Berlin, GERMANY
Source: Berlin Sports Museum – Marathoneum
Contact:
Berlin Sports Museum –
Marathoneum
Martina Behrendt (Manager)
Ph.: +49 (0)30-3 05 83 00
Mail: Sportmuseum.Berlin@t-online.de
Olympiapark Berlin
Hanns-Braun-Straße
D-14053 Berlin
Germany
Forum for Sport History –
Support Society for the Berlin Sports Museum
Gerd Steins (President)
Ph.: 030 – 229 44 15
Mail: GeSteFoS@t-online.de
AIMS, GRR
Horst Milde
(AIMS Consultant Marathoneum)
Ph.: 030 – 75 70 88 40
Mail: horst-milde@t-online.de
Alt-Tempelhof 39 a,
12103 Berlin,
Germany
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