ABSTRACT
In October 1990, almost a year after the symbolic breaching of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, German re-unification was sealed with agreements on the basis of the Unification Treaty (31 August 1990). The Treaty included one article related to sport. It was solely concerned with three elite sports agencies in the former GDR: the doping laboratory at Kreischa, the research unit for developing sports equipment (FES) in East Berlin, and the research institute for coaching and training (FKS) at Leipzig. All three agencies have been restructured and have become an integral part of the Federal Institute for Sport Science, headed by the Ministry of Interior. The DHfK, where after 1972 the former GDR coaches were trained, was dismantled along with the entire GDR sports system in the early 1990s. Former GDR sports associations joined West German sports associations after re-unification, one example of which was the GDR Football Association (DFV), which became the north-east regional branch of the West German Football Association (DFB) and included the five football associations of the five new Länder (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony). All other former GDR sports associations were similarly merged with their West German counterparts on the lines of the football model. Many sports clubs, linked previously either with the army (ASK), the Ministry of State Security, the so-called Stasi (Dynamo) or with state companies (VEB) were closed down. The former state enterprises were privatised and their sports facilities were made available for employees.
