Abstract
During the thaw (1963) after the Cuban missile crisis, West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt proposed jointly-hosted Olympics on both sides of the Berlin Wall. Historians have dismissed this initiative as a propaganda stunt. It was not. Belying his reputation for realism, Brandt aimed to use popular culture and non-governmental organisations to ease the Cold War at its most dangerous flashpoint. The ensuing internal and public discourses illuminate how Brandt and his Eastern and Western opponents assessed the risks and rewards of a policy of cultural and political engagement. Amid the doubly-treacherous political terrain, only false starts permitted the architect of German–German détente to trace the boundary between the imaginative and the imaginary.
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