Thursday 8 March 2012

Olympic Games 1928 - 2028

My twitter displayed a message from ISAF:

Following that link the first thing I noticed on the page was the poster.
Olympische Spiele 1928?
That is not Dutch, that is German!

How come a German poster was in use for these Games?

Of course the web is an excellent source to find answers:
This was the official poster:

From Wikipedia:

The official poster for the Olympic Games of Amsterdam was a design of Jos Rovers. The organization ordered 10,000 copies to be printed and distributed. The poster shows a running male athlete in white outfit, with on the background the Olympic Stadium with the Olympic flag. Remarkable is the unnatural posture of the athlete: both left leg and arm swing out to the front, a posture in which balance is lost quickly.

The IOC has never been able to acquire the copyrights of the poster, not even from the heirs Rovers. Therefore, out of practical considerations, in IOC publications another poster is used, with the German Olympic Games Spiele text and a partially in the Dutch flag-drenched athlete with peace leaf in his hand. That design was created for the cover of a German book about the Amsterdam Games. (After the first WW this was the first time Germany was invited back to participate in the Games)
 My search also gave me this one:



Again a running athlete - this time with the correct posture - surrounded by all the sports that were part of the OG in 1928.  At the top left and right, The Dutch Lion and the three X's - symbol of the City of Amsterdam.

There's a plan to get the Olympic Games back in the Netherlands in 2028 - one hundred years after the first time. It is however to early to speculate if this plan has any chance of success.

The first poster is however already made:


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