Berlin Wants to Host Olympics as 100th Anniversary of 1936 Games Looms

Berlin is planning to bid to host the Olympic Summer Games for the second time, potentially for 2036 in what would be a candidacy fraught with history.

Berlin sports minister Iris Spranger on Tuesday said the city wants to put on a sustainable Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2036, 2040 or 2044, by refurbishing existing sports venues.

Berlin has hosted the Games before — the 2036 Games would be 100 years after the infamous Games organized by the Nazi Party. Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, known as Olympiastadion, was built for the 1936 Games. Adolf Hitler was personally involved in the design and construction of the 100,000-seat track-and-field stadium.

“I believe that the 2036 Games, regardless of where they take place, will also focus on the Nazi Games of 1936. That’s part of history and attention will be paid to it,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said. “I have to tell you, I’m proud to be the governing mayor of a city that has changed in the last 100 years, that we no longer stand for dictatorship, exclusion, and mass violence, but that Berlin is now a cosmopolitan, international metropolis, a colorful, diverse city.”

Berlin’s bid — titled “Berlin+” with support from the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Schleswig-Holstein — is to be presented to the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) before an end-of-month deadline. It will be up to the DOSB to decide which Games to bid for.

Previous Olympic bids including from Berlin for 2000 and Leipzig for 2012 failed, while bids from Munich for the 2022 Winter Games and Hamburg for 2024 Summer Games were stopped by referendums. Spranger said she was against a referendum, saying she preferred “dialogue with one another. Not just yes or no, but that the public really knows what we’re planning.”

Spranger envisaged beach volleyball at the Brandenburg Gate, and water sports in Grünau, a riverside locality which also staged water sports in 1936. Otherwise, Spranger gave few details during the presentation, saying the bid was still at concept phase.

Germany last hosted the Olympics 1972 in Munich, known for a terrorist attack on September 5 when eight Palestinian terrorists from the group Black September took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage, resulting in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes, 5 terrorists and a policeman.

The next Summer Olympics are in Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032. India, Istanbul, Madrid and Rome have expressed interest in 2036 or 2040.