Biography and Social History under the Challenge of Commissional Research. The Case of Carl Diem

Abstract

Commissional research implies chances, temptations and problems. This becomes obvious in the case of Carl Diem who was a central figure of sport organization and ideology from the Wilhelminian era up to the Federal Republic. After having been recognized as an authority of sport through long time, his name became controversial during the 1990s because of his involvement in Nazi policy of sport and war. The German Sport Federation launched a research project, resulting among others in a collected volume. It presents eye-opening detail studies on the history of body culture and of sportive mass rituals, but the bridging between social history and biography, which is discussed in a spirit of “postmodern deconstruction”, fails. The approach lacks a critical theory of fascist sport as unified singular, which was the project of both the Nazi state and Carl Diem − and continued in post-1945 Olympism.