Sport und Sportvereine in Estland. Eine Skizze

Recreation, Nationalisation, and Integration: Sport in Camps for Estonian and Jewish DPs in Post-War Germany

“…Kalev was after all nothing but a camouflage under which an elitist group of Estonian civil servants, businessmen, teachers, journalists and lawyers gathered together to discuss possibilities of a prospective independent homeland. 74 After the 1905 revolution Kalev concentrated increasingly on sport since it was more or less impossible to follow up plans of independence. The club tried now to get more influence on the development of Estonian sports, especially in the field of tennis, gymnastics, track and field, swimming and footballan area with a vivid German Baltic sporting scene.…”

“…Already in the dim and distant Estonian past -this is what Estonian propaganda declared -sporting competitions had taken place on Estonian soil that had laid the foundation for the extraordinary success of Estonian sports in the present. 76 It is not a coincidence that heavy athletics and track and field were practised in the Estonian DP camps, and in combination with the already described ceremonies on official occasions like matches or Baltic Olympics they curdled to manifestations of national self-representation. Unlike the Jewish DPs -and astonishingly, as I would argue -the Estonian DP sport teams, clubs and associations did not adopt the names of the famous sport clubs from the interwar period or of the "fathers" of Estonian sport to remind of the "proud" past; no "Kalev Augsburg" or the like took part in the sporting competitions.…”