Berlin presents bid to rehost Olympics with 100th anniversary of 1936 Games looming

BERLIN — Berlin has formally presented its bid to rehost the Olympics in the same stadium where Jesse Owens starred during the 1936 Games under the Nazis.

Berlin sports minister Iris Spranger on Tuesday said the city wants to put on a sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2036, 2040 or 2044, by refurbishing existing sports venues.

But her announced plans to include the former airport Tempelhof are likely to be resisted by locals who already opposed any development of the popular city park in a 2014 referendum.

Spranger envisaged beach volleyball at the Brandenburg Gate, and water sports in Grünau, a riverside locality which also staged water sports in 1936.

Otherwise, Spranger gave few details during the presentation, saying the bid was still at concept phase.

“You’ll have to be patient,” she told a journalist.

Many Berliners are against the idea of staging the Olympics at all, regardless of them potentially taking place on the 100th anniversary of the Games already hosted by the Nazis. An initiative called “NOlympia Berlin” has already announced plans to block it by collecting enough signatures to force a referendum.

Munich’s bid to host the Winter Games in 2022 and Hamburg’s hopes of hosting the Summer Games in 2024 were both foiled by referendums.

Spranger said she was against a referendum, saying she preferred “dialogue with one another. Not just yes or no, but that the public really knows what we’re planning.”

But for that, Tuesday’s presentation was little help.

Local politician Klara Schedlich of the opposition Green party spoke against the bid.

“Our tax money is better spent on sports clubs than the IOC,” Schedlich said, referring to the International Olympic Committee.

Berlin’s bid — titled “Berlin+” with support from the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Schleswig-Holstein — is to be presented to the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) before an end-of-month deadline.

It will be up to the DOSB to decide which Games to bid for. Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Olympics and Brisbane the 2032 Olympics, so the next available edition will be 2036, the 100th anniversary of the Berlin Games.

“I believe that the 2036 Games, regardless of where they take place, will also focus on the Nazi Games of 1936. That’s part of history and attention will be paid to it,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said. “I have to tell you, I’m proud to be the governing mayor of a city that has changed in the last 100 years, that we no longer stand for dictatorship, exclusion, and mass violence, but that Berlin is now a cosmopolitan, international metropolis, a colorful, diverse city.”

The DOSB previously said a German bid for 2040 was also possible. Munich, Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia also plan bids. A final decision on a German bidder is expected by fall next year.

“It’s important for Germany to make a bid. We’re making an offer here today,” Wegner said.

The formal presentation took place in the same battle-scarred stadium, Berlin’s Olympiastadion, where Adolf Hitler watched Owens, the Black American athlete, win four gold medals in the 1936 Games, dealing a blow to Hitler’s notions of racial superiority.

Hitler was personally involved in the design and construction of the 100,000-seat track-and-field stadium after the Nazis assumed power in 1933, two years after the Games were awarded to the city.