Political Pressure Dismantles East German Sports Machine

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The big bronze statue of the javelin hurler identifies the building as a sports school, but half the javelin is snapped off and the marble base is crumbling. Inside the building that was once the premier academy of the powerful East German sports machine, glass trophy cases gape emptily, and a tax consultant, one of thousands of private businesses sprouting in eastern Germany's dash to the market, has taken up rooms on the ground floor.

"Just one of those measures to help pay the upkeep," sighed Helmut Kirchgassner, a former middleweight boxer and professor of the theory and practice of training who is the school's new dean.

Officially dubbed the German College for Physical Culture, the school produced the coaches, trainers and sports medicine personnel who were responsible for East Germany's remarkable success at the highest levels of international sports. That success was demonstrated at the 1980 Games in Moscow -- after Western nations, led by the United States, stayed away to protest the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan -- the East Germans won 47 gold, 37 silver and 42 bronze medals, second only to the Soviet Union. Struggling for Upkeep

The school is now in limbo, its status unsure, staff cuts looming, its coaches either discredited for doping practices or leaving for more lucrative jobs in the old West Germany and farther West, and its financing unreliable.

In fact, these days, struggling to pay the upkeep is what takes up most of the time of athletes and sports officials on the eastern edge of a reunited Germany.

Eighteen months ago, they were still the heroes of the nation, standing triumphantly above the world of international sport that made their Communist state, politically and economically a dwarf, an athletic giant. Now they lie among the flotsam and jetsam of the discredited system, the athletes heckled for the privileges they enjoyed and their clubs threatened with closure.

As an abundance of coaches and trainers struggle for the few jobs available, a dog-eat-dog atmosphere has set in, with charges flying fast and furiously that so-and-so either used drugs or helped athletes do so, or belonged to the now-defunct Communist Party, or worse, the secret police, whose goons laced the sports establishment.

Harsh debate focuses on the so-called Child and Youth Sport Schools, a network of 25 prep schools whose pupils were picked by intricate tests and measurements from among first-grade youngsters. Parents were required to sign contracts permitting the children to withdraw only after consultation with state authorities, and many top East German athletes were graduates. Debate focuses on demands by Germans in the west that the schools be liberalized, a process some Germans in the east say will destroy the schools' effectiveness as training centers.

In a small apartment on the outskirts of Leipzig, Thomas Munkelt, an Olympic gold medal winner in the 110-meter hurdles in 1980, recalled the days of gold and glory. Munkelt, who attended a prep school for three years, described how sports had enabled him to climb out of a gritty home town near Buna to the practice of dentistry in a state clinic. But by Western standards, he admitted, the rewards were slim.

As a student, he and his wife and daughter shared two small dormitory rooms, until a small apartment became available. Every four years there was a new car, a stodgy Soviet-built Lada in his case, and small things, like fresh fruit, that few other East Germans saw much of, brightened an otherwise simple life.

Now, with Communism collapsed, he and a fellow hurdler-turned-dentist are seeking loans for a private practice. He laments what he views as the gradual demise of the old sports machinery.

"The basic problem is the training of young athletes, which in principle is being destroyed," he said. "Maybe in 5, 10 years' time it'll be back again. But for now, the money's just not there.

"According to our papers, we were always fulfilling our economic goals," Munkelt added bitterly. "But our stores were still always empty. We ran our sports by the performance principle, but not our economy."

The former hurdler has no excuses for East Germany's doping record. "You cannot force anyone to take tablets," he said, "but I don't think it was good the way it was done, with central lists and central organization and all that. The most important thing is that, with better testing, the use of drugs is being pushed back further and further."

The exact extent of drug use in East Germany remains a murky matter.

The German weekly Der Spiegel has published details of East Germany's centralized doping program, with two high-powered research institutes, one at the college in Leipzig and another in the hilltop village of Kreischa, south of Dresden, reporting to a doping headquarters at the Sports Medicine Service in Berlin.

A former swimming coach at a Potsdam sports club, Michael Regner, described how club physicians had initiated him in the distribution of anabolics to team swimmers, who included Kristin Otto and Silke Horner, both gold medalists at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Regner, who fled East Germany in August 1988, through Hungary and now coaches in New Zealand, described how a drug called Oral-Turinabol, manufactured by an East German company in Jena, was given to 13-year-old swimmers.

The reports prompted the Government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl to establish a seven-member commission, which began work last month, to examine doping abuse in Germany and make proposals for control. Underscoring official concern, Kohl told Parliament recently, "We support the declared intention of the sports clubs to take decisive steps against doping practices. Top-level sports must respect human dignity."

The mud-slinging has hardly hindered German sports groups in the western part of the country from snapping up former East German experts. Last fall, it was reported that Hermann Buhl, the deputy director of the medical department at the Leipzig research center, was hired by the Institute for Sports Medicine, in Paderborn. Hartmut Riedel, East Germany's track and field team physician, is now professor of sports medicine at Bayreuth, in the former West Germany. Much of the sports medical center at Kreischa, though not its doping lab, a major focus of the commission's attention, has been taken over by Bavaria Klinik, a western company. Though the commission has yet to begin hearings, many top-secret records are reportedly missing, evidently shredded or sold by former researchers.

At Leipzig University, Joachim Weiskopf, a dentistry professor who is also vice president of the National Olympic Committee of united Germany, said he had a "clear position regarding doping, and I think I have a clear conscience." But he said charges and countercharges were fed by the terrible struggle for jobs in a collapsing economy. The bloated German Gymnastics and Sports Union, the vast East German sports bureaucracy, had 12,000 employees, of which only about 1,500 can be kept on, he said. East Germany had about 600 track and field coaches, but now there are jobs for only 72 coaches, and those jobs are all taken at the moment.

"There's a psychological component," he said over sips of coffee, "the fact that so many were in the Communist Party, were bearers of state secrets. So now people are saying, 'He did doping.' There's envy, and everyone's taking potshots at everyone else."

Last June, Weiskopf, a 64-year-old, a former Olympic field hockey player, replaced Manfred Ewald, a staunch Communist, as head of the still existing East German National Olympic Committee, a post he assumed with the sole goal of leading East Germany back into a united German Olympic organization. Weiskopf, never a Communist, was known for his integrity. "Our states, our cities are looking at all our unemployment and saying, 'Let's first rebuild the factories and then invest in sports; let's put our money first where it's productive,' " he said. "So we're standing here with empty hands, so we can only go to the West Germans and say, 'Help us.' While their reaction is, 'There they go asking for money again.' "

Over at the college, the 1,000 or so students are already learning what this means. The Government of Saxony, where Leipzig lies, has ordered the school disbanded, announcing plans to refound it as a physical education department of Leipzig University.

Two years ago the faculty and staff totaled 1,050, Kirchgassner said, and now 700 remain. He estimates that the school will eventually have a staff of about 270, including 120 full-time professors.

Moreover, while the college once focused only on Olympic disciplines like swimming, diving, track and field, the syllabus was broadened to include gym teacher training, sports for rehabilitation and recreation, and even sports management.

But demands that the Federal Government in Bonn finance the school's continued independence are growing, fueled by students' desires that the college remain a center of competitive sports training in eastern Germany, to parallel a similar institute in Cologne, in the west.

Now, the Research Institute with its high-powered laboratories and testing equipment, is locked. But on a recent afternoon, desks in the bright library were filled with students while others worked out in the school's training halls.

But for Kirchgassner, it was clear that despite the semblance of business as usual, an epoch was drawing to a close.

"You have to be realistic," he said, "competitive sports as they were exercised here, or in the G.D.R. generally, are not salvageable. We have to find new forms, and that will be tough, because the conditions, financial and otherwise, are lacking."