Communication Breakdown: Sports Federations and Media Politics in the Weimar Republic

Organized sport in the Weimar Republic was dominated by three strands—so-called bourgeois sport, the gymnastics movement (Turnen) and the workers’ sports movement (Arbeitersport). While scholarship has rightly pointed out the differences between their federations, it has neglected a significant feature they had in common: the struggle to communicate key messages to their members. For the first time, this article examines debates about and developments in the communications of Weimar’s leading sports organizations. It shows that through the 1920s producing journals, running news services and lobbying the press became as important as competing in or watching sport itself, as the organizations sought to raise their profile, gain new members and retain the members they already had. Each of them, while envying the others, failed to meet its goals for similar reasons: inadequate internal structures, poor decision-making and the allure of commercialized sport and the papers and magazines it fed and produced. While scholarship has often noted the high level of sports coverage in the mainstream press, it has not explored the dynamic pull of such reporting on readers. By examining the effects of the professional media on the active members of the three main federations, this article therefore also sheds light on the power of new forms of writing and entertainment to influence individuals as the shift to consumer habits increased in all social classes throughout the Weimar Republic. In doing so, it bridges between empirically orientated forms of sports history and cultural histories of the press.