No language seems richer in empty phrases and oblique metaphors than that of soccer commentators. It is as if they are trying to keep up with the sporting action with their linguistic effort, which they are only breathlessly panting after. Among the linguistic inaccuracies of recent times is the remark that "regular time" will soon be over. This means that the 90th minute is approaching, at which point a game normally comes to an end (and usually did twenty years ago). Nowadays, referees are required to make up for delays or breaks in the game, so that the final whistle sometimes takes three, sometimes five, sometimes eight minutes longer. However, this stoppage time is not, as the saying goes, "irregular", it is in accordance with the rules. Before the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Jörn Hintzer and Jakob Hüfner staged an entertaining soccer game for the "Sendung mit der Maus" show that took all these clichés and metaphors literally. Great fun!

"It's Jochen" (1970) by Alfred Jungraithmayr was one of the remarkable films shown at the Sportfilmtage in Oberhausen. The director, who died in 2016, made a series of important social and political documentaries in the 1980s and 1990s. In his debut film, he portrayed the Austrian racing driver Jochen Rindt, who had the chance to become Formula 1 world champion in the year of filming. Unlike today, the director and his cameramen were able to accompany the racing driver almost everywhere back then. For example, Rindt explains the Zandvoort circuit to the director during a drive, the race of which is subsequently documented in the film. During this race, one driver – the Englishman Piers Courage - suffers a fatal accident. The camera accidentally registers a cloud of smoke rising in the background. However, the race is not stopped. Rindt wins and becomes the favorite for the world championship title. But ten weeks later, he himself has an accident during a training run in Monza. Jungraithmayr's film, which refers to this accidental death on a text panel at the beginning, is a reflection on a sport that led to many fatalities well into the 1980s. The film, which would have blown up the program of the Short Film Festival due to its length of 75 minutes, can be viewed online.

At a time when women's soccer had not yet received the media attention it rightly enjoys today, Aysun Bademsoy made "Mädchen am Ball" (Girls on the Ball) in the mid-1990s, a portrait of female players of Turkish origin in Berlin-Kreuzberg, whose Agrispor team was fighting for promotion at the time. The film reports on controversies in the families, in which some view the sport of their daughters or sisters critically. And at the end, it captures the racist structures that still existed in German soccer at the time, when one of the team's players was banned from playing for an incredibly long time.

Mia Guethe, born in Hamburg in 2002, is a sports journalist for the monthly magazine for soccer culture 11FREUNDE, which is now part of the Spiegel Group, and also works as a freelance journalist. She moved to Berlin a few years ago to study political science and is still based in the capital, where she writes and speaks mainly about sports policy issues such as modern soccer, the commercialization of sport, sexism in the industry and in stadiums, and the everyday business of sport. She also repeatedly perceives soccer as a socio-cultural phenomenon and thus addresses a soccer culture in various ways that needs to be preserved with humor and criticism. Articles from the recent past include (all behind the paywall):

A self-experiment with Saudi Arabian soccer. 

A report about the SGS Essen. 

A portrait of the brains behind FC Venice. 

An account of the culture war in German soccer. 

And a commentary on the diversity debate in the national team.

Almost everyone can agree on criticism of "modern soccer". Even those who make a good living from it. Perhaps this self-contradiction began in the 1970s. In any case, it can be heard in a report by the political television magazine "Panorama" (ARD) in 1977, in which it discusses Franz Beckenbauer's move to the USA as an "emigration" (!), where he signed up with the New York Cosmos. The eight-minute film begins with footage from Munich's Olympic Stadium, where Beckenbauer played home games with FC Bayern at the time. The news of the player's move to the USA had previously become known. Now the fans are chanting "Swan - you bastard". And one of their banners, which reads "Franz stay with FC", also reads "Swan - the capitalist pig". The criticism is therefore not primarily directed at the player, but at his manager, who - according to the off-camera commentary - has a twenty percent share in Beckenbauer's income. Beckenbauer has his say in the report. He stutters awkwardly about "money as a means of payment", which would previously have been concealed by cuts. "Panorama" is critical of everyone: Beckenbauer, Schwan, the club misnamed "1st FC Bayern Munich", but also the fans. It did not occur to the "Panorama" editorial team that it was television, to which this magazine belongs, that turned soccer into big business and gave a player like Beckenbauer the audiovisual presence that he successfully marketed thanks to Schwan. Nor did it occur to them that "New York Cosmos" belonged to the US media company Warner Bros. via a record company in 1977, which now bears the name Warner Bros. Discovery following various mergers. This company owns the television rights to the Summer Olympics in Paris, which will take place this summer and for which ARD has acquired sub-licenses.

One of the lies in sports films is that doping in cycling is an invention of the 1970s. Right from the start of the Tour de France in 1903, the riders took substances (now banned) such as cocaine and chloroform. This was a matter of necessity, as the organizers were keen to overtax the cyclists' bodies when choosing the stage routes. This is exactly what produced the headline-grabbing stories that could be sold as dramas. A documentary film by Louis Malle, which he shot in 1962 but only released in a 43-minute version in 1967 and later in an 18-minute version, shows how commonplace doping was in the Tour de France. The off-screen narrator is the sports journalist Jean Bobet, who himself took part in the Tour several times and whom Roland Barthes described as a "patented intellectual" in his “lexicon of cyclists” (1955). In the 8th minute of the film, Malle strings together scenes from the press center, over which he superimposes sounds that could come from articles or reports; they are demonstrably not original sounds. The image of a journalist typing a text into a typewriter is accompanied by the sentence: "Doping or no doping - that is the question". Two minutes later, a second voiceover will say that we should talk about doping. For the riders, this is called "charge". Doping does not give riders additional strength, but suppresses pain. The doped athlete becomes a machine.

But what is sport? The debate also reached television. And so the regional program "Hier und heute" reported on the 1961 German Miniature Golf Championships, not on the sporting event itself, but on the end of a civil case. The minigolfers had fought in court to establish that what they were doing was a sport and not a game of chance. This news is illustrated by the reporter himself picking up the club, hitting the ball over the railing and then asking an official about the legal dispute. While the conversation continues off-screen, women and men of different ages can be seen swinging the bat - much better than the reporter - to complete the respective course. The condescending gestures and facial expressions deny any interest in what the mini-golfers themselves see as a sport, but which television probably regards as a kind of leisure activity. They have probably forgotten that just a few years ago, Sunday afternoons on this same "German television" were filled with all kinds of things that were described as sport - such as dancesport competitions or gravity races.

Even during the Nazi era, television sport meant that those who watched the program on television should not remain passive. Before the Second World War, gymnastics courses were an integral part of the television programs offered by the state-run "Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft". Their programs were called "Rundfunkgymnastik - ferngesehen" (Radio gymnastics - watching TV), "Körperschulung für die Frau" (Body training for women) or "Kindergymnastik" (Children's gymnastics). On post-war "German television", a top gymnast began in 1955 with the program bearing his name: "Five minutes with Adalbert Dickhut", which was soon changed to "Ten minutes with Adalbert Dickhut". It was aimed at "boys and girls", as Dickhut says in the introduction, and ran for 15 years in the afternoon at 5.00 pm. It was about "body-building exercises", which Dickhut demonstrated with a group of children - three boys and one girl - in the studio in front of two electronic cameras and which were to be practiced at home by those watching. The only equipment allowed was what could be found in almost every household. And jumps should be easy, because - as Dickhut says - "we don't want the neighbors' ceilings to fall down". The gymnast repeatedly addresses the situation in which the children watching may find themselves. In the gym, the back should be stretched and not bent forward as if you wanted to sit on the couch with "mom" and maybe watch TV from there. So they hop, jump and crawl on command. To compensate for the postural damage caused by watching television for too long.

Martin Krauß, born in Koblenz in 1964, studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and completed his degree with a thesis on the end of the GDR sports system. Since then, he has worked as a journalist on topics relating to politics and sport. From 1992 to 1994, he published the legendary magazine "Sportkritik", which had the nice subtitle "Die Zeitschrift gegen das Unentschieden". He later worked as an editor, in the 1990s at the "Junge Welt" and from 2008 to 2019 at the "Jüdische Allgemeine". In between and afterwards, he worked as a freelancer and wrote many articles for "Jungle World", "Freitag" and, in recent years, increasingly for "taz". He has also published a number of books - for example on doping and the boxer Max Schmeling. His book "Dabei sein wäre alles" is currently being published by Bertelsmann-Verlag, which reports on 474 pages on "how athletes are still fighting against marginalisation today" (the subtitle). The novel "The Given Day" (2008) by Dennis Lehane mentioned in the interview was published by Ullstein in 2010 under the German title "Im Aufruhr jener Tage". A list of Martin Krauß' publications can be found here.

With the beginning of the sound film era at the end of the 1920s, the visual comedy in sporting performances declined. Only a few, such as Jacques Tati, remained faithful to slapstick based on body language. In the short film "Soigne ton gauche" (Keep Your Left Up) by Jacques Becker (1936), he satirizes boxing. In his first feature-length film "Jour du fête" (The Big Day) in 1949, he ironizes professional cycling when the cycling letter carrier, played by himself, effortlessly overtakes the peloton in a road bike race. And in his second feature film "Les vacances de monsieur Hulot" (Monsieur Hulot's Holidays) in 1953, he caricatures the sporting activities in a vacation resort on the Atlantic coast: from organized beach gymnastics to swimming, sailing, horse riding and table tennis. The highlight is a tennis match. Hulot (Tati) has noticed that this sport has a certain nimbus among the vacationers and wants to be part of it. He buys a tennis racket and the sales clerk shows him how to hold it. Although this is wrong, it gives Hulot an unexpected momentum when serving, so that he defeats his opponents - first two ladies, then the sports beau of the coastal town. Incidentally, in 1977 Tati made a documentary about a European Cup soccer match played by SC Bastia, which his daughter Sophie Tatischeff completed 23 years later: "Forza Bastia".

The tennis match as an excerpt from the 1978 version (TC 00:47:35- 00:49:54).

30 years ago, Aysun Bademsoy spent a season watching the women's football team of the Agrispor club from Berlin-Kreuzberg, which wanted to move up to the national league. Her film "Mädchen am Ball" is also a portrait of some of the young women, most of whom are of Turkish origin, whose commitment to sport is not met with enthusiasm by all their families. At the end, the film captures how a Berlin sports court makes a scandalous decision that would never have been made against a player of German descent. A sports film that develops into a study of social and political conditions. Further information on the film can be found in the interview Dietrich Leder conducted with Aysun Bademsoy, in which she talks about the sequels to "Mädchen am Ball", among other things.

Sophia Groening, born in Düsseldorf in 1994, studied philosophy and visual studies at the University of Witten/Herdecke. She has been at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) since 2017, where she is currently preparing her graduation film. Her short fiction film "Muss ja nicht sein, dass es heute ist" (mentioned in the interview) was screened in the German Competition of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 2022 and received an "Honourable Mention" from the jury. In the same year, it was honoured with the German Short Film Award. In 2023, the German Film Critics' Association awarded its prize in the category "Best Short Film" of the year to this debut film. Jan Bonny, born in Düsseldorf in 1979, completed his studies at the KHM with the screenplay for his feature film "Gegenüber", which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007. Since then, he has directed cinema films such as "Wintermärchen" (2018), TV films such as "Über Barbarossaplatz" (2016) and "Wir wären andere Menschen" (2019), "Tatort" episodes such as "Borowski und das Fest des Nordens" (2017) and "Ich hab im Träume geweinet" (2020) and the "Polizeiruf 110" episode "Der Tod macht Engel aus uns allen" (mentioned in the interview). He also developed and directed the TV series "King of Stonks" (2022) and "Freiheit ist das Einzigste, was zählt" (2023). Most recently, his film "The Panther" premiered at the Berlinale in February. In addition to these cinema and television films, he has also made a number of short films, music videos and commercials. His work has received numerous awards. Reviews of his films can be found here.

Modern sport, as it was coined in the industrializing nation states in the mid-19th century, served the purposes of the new forms of work. At the same time, sport prepared the body for the demands of the campaigns of the national armies through exercises such as those developed by the German gymnastics movement. In the "Deutsche Wochenschau" 641 from November 1942, the first four minutes are devoted to sport: in the report on an anniversary event of the organization "Kraft durch Freude” (Strength through Joy), synchronized gymnastic exercises by over 100 women can be seen, which combine to form an ornamental mass image that can be seen in a long shot. Close-ups show soldiers in uniforms and with Nazi symbols rejoicing. The world record holder in endurance gliding is introduced as a “Sturmbannführer”. The commentary explains that "all German boxers remained undefeated" in the three-country boxing match between Germany, Hungary and Italy. The remaining 13 minutes are devoted to the war: after images of the swearing-in of an SS regiment in Prague and the construction of a submarine bunker on the Atlantic, shots of the advance of German troops in Africa and the Caucasus are shown. As usual in sports reports, all the images are dominated by non-stop movement - of infantry, tanks, ships and airplanes. Problems on the eastern front are presented as having been overcome. A huge lie: by this time, the Soviet counter-offensive had begun, which shortly afterwards trapped German troops at Stalingrad. The beginning of the end of the German war of aggression, which subjugated large parts of Europe and enabled the mass murder of the European Jews.

This image (TC 00:19.40) comes from one of the most famous sports films of all time: "Olympia. Festival of the Nations. Festival of Beauty" (Germany 1938) by Leni Riefenstahl. And yet only a few people saw it after 1945. Because it was removed from the film after the war. Leni Riefenstahl made a new version in the mid-1950s, which not only earned her a lot of money, but also proved that her Olympic film had nothing to do with the Nazis. With the help of German authorities and courts, who transferred the rights to the film to her, she de-nazified herself and her Olympic film, so to speak. Now this image, in which Adolf Hitler is copied onto the still of the Berlin Olympic Stadium, forms the conclusion and climax of the opening sequence. And it says: Hitler and these Olympic Games in Berlin, which he will subsequently open, are one, just as Nazi Germany and Hitler are one. The image is a still from the first part of the film. It was taken from the version contained in the DVD collection of all the Olympic films that Criterion in the USA published with the IOC. The booklet says: “We believe the restored version of Olympia contained in this collection to be as close as possible to the German version that premiered on Hitler’s forty-ninth birthday at Berlin’ am Zoo Theater”. 

A denazified version can be found here.

Among the many myths surrounding Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia. One Festival of the Nations. Beauty of the Festival" about the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin also includes the claim that the sports film was reinvented here. This can only be claimed by those who do not know or do not want to know the history of sports films. The film about the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, for example, already contains much of what Leni Riefenstahl was later credited with inventing: Excellent camera locations and angels, very good slow-motion and telephoto shots, shots of spectators in long shots as well as close-ups, and a narrative form whose elements are still conveyed here via intertitles. At the time, the film was released in an Italian version ("La IX Olympiade ad Amsterdam") and a Dutch version ("De Olympische Spelen - Amsterdam 1928"). The Dutch film was directed by Julius Perel and Wilhelm Prager. In this version, there is also a text panel in the context of the high diving (TC: 61:03:30), which anticipates a visual idea of the Riefenstahl film: “Als vogels zwevende door de lucht“ (Like birds soaring through the air). Many, but not all, Olympic films can be viewed on a website operated by the IOC after registering free of charge.

Colleges are among the most important sports institutions in the USA, and they like to remember their great victories and their heroes. The slapstick film took on college sport several times. Examples include "College" (1927) with Buster Keaton and "Horse Feathers" (1932) with the Marx Brothers. The first feature-length sports movie of this kind was made in 1925 with Harold Lloyd in the leading role. "The Freshman" establishes the importance of college sports at the beginning via the media: the father of the young man, who is about to start his transfer to a prestigious college, wants to listen to the radio broadcast of a football game at this very college. Meanwhile, in his room, which has a large poster of the movie "The College Hero" on the door, the son sings along to the college team's anthem so loudly that he drowns out his father's radio broadcast. At college itself, the young man is just an outsider who is always the butt of everyone's jokes. In football, too, he is a joke who doesn't succeed at anything and is therefore only involved in training as a living dummy. However, the logic of the romantic comedy dictates that he wins over the woman he adores in the end because he is substituted in the decisive football game at a time when no one else is available and, despite his overzealousness, clumsiness and physical deficits, he manages to score the decisive touchdown at the last second.

In many slapstick films from 1914 to 1928, comedy is triggered by physical actions that appear strange, bizarre, dysfunctional or exaggerated. The actors had acquired the ability to perform such usually strenuous physical acts during their time in the circus or in vaudeville theaters. The clumsiness of a clown requires the kind of perfect body control that only sportsmen and sportswomen know. This is why most stars in slapstick films still performed the most dangerous scenes themselves. Take Buster Keaton, for example, who put his body in the most difficult situations in films such as "The General" (1926) or "Steamboat Bill Jr." (1928). In his two-act play "Convict 23" (1920), he thematizes sport in two different ways. Firstly, he satirizes the game of golf by extracting the most absurd moments from it. Then he develops sporting actions such as bunjee jumping or the hammer throw for self-defense.

Aysun Bademsoy, born in 1960 in Mersin (Turkey), studied journalism and theatre studies at the FU Berlin. During her studies, she took on roles in feature films and worked as an assistant director for Christian Petzold and Harun Farocki. Since the late 1980s, she has mainly made documentary films. To name just a few examples: "Deutsche Polizisten" (1999) tells the story of police officers with a history of migration. "Am Rande der Städte" (2005) is about people who return to their Turkish homeland after a long and hard working life to spend their retirement there. "Traces - The Victims of the NSU" (2019) emphatically summarises the experiences of families of Turkish or Greek origin in Germany whose husbands, brothers or sons were murdered by the right-wing terrorist NSU between 2000 and 2007. The documentary film "Mädchen am Ball", which is the subject of the following interview, was made in 1995, in which the director portrays a group of young women of Turkish origin who play football in a club. She dedicated two further films to these women and their lives: "Nach dem Spiel" (1997) and "Ich geh jetzt rein" (2008). She is currently in the final stages of production on her fourth film, which captures the progress of this development. Its title: "Players". The result is a special long-term project in which sport was the starting point and which has now become the cinematic biography of an entire generation of women of Turkish origin in Germany. For further information see.

One problem with filming sporting events is that the camera has to be everywhere: at the start and finish line in running competitions, at the goal on one side and a little later at the goal on the other side in ball games. The use of multiple cameras whose footage was edited together was extremely rare (see Journal 8). In most cases, the operators of the early years were alone with their heavy and barely movable cameras; they therefore had to decide early on on a point of view that only allowed a single view of the sporting action. Unless, of course, they moved the camera themselves by placing it on a vehicle. Such shots formed their own genre at the end of the 19th century: phantom rides - see. The precision mechanic Oskar Barnack, who later developed the Leica for Leitz, made use of this idea. Around 1913, he had built a lightweight film camera for himself, with which he was more mobile than other operators. He recorded part of a rowing regatta from the referee's motorboat. The camera moved with the moving athletes. Its image showed the race of the foursome with coxswain during the race much better than the spectators on the banks of the Main could see. Unfortunately, the referee obstructed the camera's view several times. And it also failed to capture who won the race. Capturing everything at a sporting event is not easy.

In the novel "Berlin, Siegesallee" by Max Annas, published by Rowohlt in February 2024, it is recalled that in June 1913 the suffragette Emily Davison "threw herself under the English king's horse" at the Epsom Derby. "In protest against the refusal of politicians, the male ones, to even engage with the ideas of suffragists." But did Emily Davison really throw herself under the royal horse ridden by a jockey in this race? The answer to this question is provided by a British Pathé report lasting just under seven minutes, whose title "The Derby 1913" initially gives nothing away about the drama. Instead, it emphasizes the normality of the event, beginning with images of police officers fortifying themselves before the race, before the first intertitle announces: "Arrival of His Majesty The King". But the King cannot be seen as he disappears behind the spectators. This is followed by the parade of the participating horses. Four minutes of the report are already over when another intertitle signals "The Start". The race is shown from different positions on the track. In the long shots, it is not possible to see which of the horses is leading, but you can guess their speed. After almost six minutes, an intertitle says: "Suffragette killed in attempt to pull down the King's Horse". In the following long shot, the galloping horses can be seen as a figure - Emily Davison - emerges from the crowd standing behind a barrier. It appears that she is grabbing the reins of the jockey of the third-last horse when there is a collision. The horse falls, Emily Davison and the jockey fly through the air. In a second shot, taken a little later, the bodies can be seen lying on the track. Spectators rush towards them. Then the depiction of the race continues. The winner is celebrated. The jockey of the royal horse escapes with minor injuries. Emily Davison dies in hospital a few days later. 

Boxing matches were recorded by movie cameras very early on. As early as 1894, the Edison company organized fights that took place in its film studio for the camera. In 1910, the fight for the heavyweight world championship between the champion Jack Johnson and his challenger Jim Jeffries was filmed by "14 apparatuses" (according to a contemporary German advertisement). This footage was edited into an almost 90-minute movie. This was one of the first full-length feature films to document a sporting event on film. The film at the following link is an abridged version, with sounds and commentary added later. It does not show the atmosphere in the arena. According to contemporary reports, the spectators wanted to see the white boxer Jeffries win against the African-American world champion Johnson. Their racist cheers did not prevent Johnson from dominating the fight, knocking his opponent down several times in the 15th round and winning the fight. This triggered a wave of racist violence in the USA ("Johnson-Jeffries riots") in which more than 60 African-American people were murdered.

The cinematic representation of sporting events is closely linked to the technical development of recording equipment. In the early years, sports such as (association) Football, in which the athletes change direction frequently and quickly, were difficult for the fixed-lens camera positioned rigidly on a tripod. When the Pathé newsreel shot the FA Cup Final in 1910, shortly after the opening of its London office, the camera could already pan slightly, but remained static for large parts. It is no wonder that it is more interested in the preliminaries - the teams entering the pitch, the selection, the trophy in the stands at the end - than in the game itself, of which it only captures too narrow a section from the perspective of the left-hand side of the penalty area. The two goals, one for each team, were not recorded, but were announced by intertitles, as descriptions of the full film suggest. The draw forced a replay, which Newcastle United won 2-0.

The first Olympic Games of modern times took place in Athens in 1896. They were organized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a club of rich lords, according to their specifications. As far as is known, there is no film footage of these games. Film images, which for a time were passed off as footage of these games, were actually taken in 1906 during the "Intermediate Games" in Athens, which were not recognized by the IOC. The first summarized report is from the 1908 Olympic Games in London. The film, produced by Pathé, shows a series of competitions (athletics, swimming, tug-of-war, gymnastics, water polo) in eight minutes. Female athletes can also be seen in one of them - archery. The film concentrates on showing the competitions. It is not clear who wins and how. But it ends narratively, as it tells of a drama. In the marathon, which took place in the parks and on the streets of London and ended in the "White City Stadium", the Italian Dorando Pietri leads at the finish line. But he had exhausted himself so much that he collapsed several times. Spectators and judges helped him up again and again and guided him across the finish line. Although he finished first, he was disqualified for the illegal help, which is not visible. To this day, he is better known than the winner John Hayes (USA), who is carried through the stadium on a table at the end.

Ulrich Peltzer, born in Krefeld in 1956, is one of the most important writers in the Federal Republic of Germany. In his novels, he tells the story of life and survival in big cities such as Berlin across the social classes with ever-changing characters. The politically orientated novels also reflect on the question of what thoughts and strategies that aim to change conditions drive and motivate people. Despite the accuracy with which he depicts social details, his novels are not bound to banal realism. For example, Peltzer is just as aware of the role that a first-person narrator takes on as he is of the problems that an authorial narrator creates for himself. His poetological lectures "angefangen wird mittendrin", published in 2011, also bear witness to this. Ulrich Peltzer has many ties to film and the audiovisual arts. During and after his studies in Berlin, he worked as a film projectionist. With and for Christoph Hochhäusler, he wrote screenplays for cinema films such as "Unter dir die Stadt" (2010) and "Die Lügen der Sieger" (2014) and "La mort viendra" (2024). And from 2017 to 2022, he helped set up the "Literary Writing" department at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne as a guest professor. His latest novel "Der Ernst des Lebens" was published a few weeks ago - see here.

Eadweard Muybridge repeatedly shot women for his series in such a way that the respective movement in front of the camera only provided the alibi for showing them naked. The Lumière company's operators only showed women at sporting events and activities in exceptional cases, for example when they were playing boules with men. Early shots of women playing sport are therefore a rarity. At the end of the 19th century, Cecil M. Hepworth filmed women riding bicycles on several occasions. In 1899, he filmed women at a "Floral Parade" in London, which was organized by the "Catford Cycling Club". The first shot, which lasts 86 seconds, shows many women riding past, while the second, shorter shot captures women riding a slalom on a marked course.

The term "Ereignis" (event) comes from the New High German verb "eräugen", which originally meant that something happened so that it could be "eräugen", i.e. watched. Sporting events are often portrayed in films and on television in such a way that not only the athletes appear in the picture, but also those who are watching the event on location. It is as if this image design wants to say that the event is worth watching. In one of the “vues” taken by the Lumière company from 1895 onwards with one of its self-made cameras, in 1896 those watching also create a further movement that runs at right angles to the movement of the sport - in this case “Jeu de boules”. Some of these movements are provoked by the camera and the operator. For example, one of the players runs forward after his throw and cheers, running the risk of blocking the camera's view. He must have heard a call from the operator, because he moves back to the right. His sweeping arm movement signals that the view is now clear after all. He then tells other spectators not to block the camera's view. So that the event itself can be seen.

From 1880, Étienne-Jules Marey also copied the movement phases of sporting actions into a single image. He later took series of photographs and later also films that reproduced the respective movement. At the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, he captured what he himself called the "best athletes" in certain disciplines. The purpose of his recordings was to inform those who would train future athletes. The analytical image of real sport served as a model for future sport. A visual training theory began, which today culminates in self-monitoring via the cameras of a cell phone, for example.

Étienne-Jules Marey: sports footage (from minute 11.09 onwards)

In the second half of the 19th century, the new optochemical recording process of photography was particularly popular for recording and reproducing processes that the eye alone was unable to perceive accurately. These processes included the fast movements of sport. The railroad entrepreneur Leland Stanford, who also owed his fortune to the deaths of countless Chinese seasonal workers, paid the photographer Eadweard Muybridge to prove with his series-connected apparatus that a horse lifted all four hooves from the ground at a gallop. Muybridge then recorded many other movements of animals and people with his chronophotography. Women were shown almost exclusively doing housework. Men were mainly recorded during sporting exercises, as the compilation of chronophotographs from the series "Animal Locomotion" (1987) proves.

Klaus Walter, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1955, is one of the most important journalists to talk about current music on the radio and write about it in newspapers and magazines. His programme "Der Ball ist rund" (The ball is round), which was broadcast weekly by Hessischer Rundfunk for almost 25 years and was always one of the best radio programmes in the "Spex" music magazine poll, is legendary. It was cancelled in 2008 because it no longer suited the station's mainstream-focused hierarchy. Since then, he has been presenting current and historical pop music on the internet station Byte.FM under the title "Was ist Musik" (currently: once a month on Mondays from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m.) under pointed headings, which he categorises and comments on (also politically).

For members of the Byte.FM support association, an independent and ad-free internet radio station, many of the older programmes are accessible via the archive. A list can be found here.

On WDR3 open, he has been presenting the programme "Ex & Pop" together with Diviam Hofmann for two years, the editions of which are freely accessible via the WDR media library.

This includes the 12 March edition, which is dedicated to the topic "2:1 for love. What's so pop about football".

His text "Star-Container Taylor Swift" appeared in the March issue of the magazine "Merkur", which can be downloaded at this link for a small fee.
 

Marcel Reif, born in Poland in 1949, moved to Kaiserslautern with his parents via Israel as a child, worked in the ZDF sports department from 1984, later heading up its "Sportspiegel" program and commentating on many soccer matches. In 1994, he moved to the private broadcaster RTL, which had acquired the rights to the Champions League. In 1999, he moved to the pay-TV channel Premiere, now known as Sky, where he commentated on Bundesliga and Champions League matches until 2016. Marcel Reif was awarded the Grimme Prize, the Bavarian Television Prize and the German Television Prize for his work. His autobiography "Nachspielzeit - Ein Leben mit dem Fußball", written with Holger Gertz, was published in 2017. On January 31, 2024, Marcel Reif spoke to the German Bundestag on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism about his Jewish father's experiences during the time of the German Destruction of the European Jews. 

Text of the Speech     |      Video of the speech