50 years ago Munich was an Olympic city. In the summer of 1972, the world met here to compete in sporting events. 50 years ago, the Olympic hostess Silvia Sommerlath met her future husband, Crown Prince Carl Gustaf, here. Four years later he made her queen with a lavish wedding in Stockholm. Her Majesty Queen Silvia of Sweden has a lot in common with Munich: Here she was at the language and interpreting institute, here she looked after the VIPs of the Olympic Games in a light blue dirndl.
50 years later, on an unusually warm May 20th, she is standing in a conference room of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in front of clicking cameras. She has come to talk about dementia, an illness she had to experience herself with her mother, and she is also expected to talk about her months as an Olympic hostess. “A great, incredibly intense time,” she will say later.
The queen, who is now 78 years old, looks slim. She wears flat ballerinas, black trousers with a light, short jacket in the typical Chanel style and pearls around her neck. Her smile is as wide, calm and engaging as you’ve seen in countless pictures from the past five decades. She gets flowers in her hand, for which she says thank you with a few words and that smile that is so meaningful. Anyone who reacts in such a friendly manner can do no wrong in public. This is the highest art of queens. But she knows how to give warm-hearted and intelligent answers to questions about the agreed topics.
The Munich Press Club organized this conference. Pro forma questions had been asked in advance, and the Queen was not allowed to be addressed directly. What about your eldest daughter’s marriage? That doesn’t matter on this Friday afternoon. The reason for the trip to Munich is a fundraising gala and a concert on Saturday afternoon for people with dementia and their families in the old town hall. At Silvia’s side is Désirée von Bohlen und Halbach, the niece of the Swedish king who lives in Munich and founder of the Desideria Care association, which campaigns for education about dementia, breaks the taboo on this disease and wants to help those affected.
The Swedish Queen Silvia (r) in the Hotel Bayerischer Hof with Desiree von Bohlen und Halbach, the Munich-based niece of the Swedish King and founder of the Desideria Care association.
(Photo: dpa)
But what does Silvia of Sweden remember when she thinks of the 1972 Summer Games? She begins to tell the story in a surprisingly deep voice with no accent at all. You don’t hear that she grew up in Heidelberg as a child, lived in Brazil for ten years and has now been living in Sweden for almost 50 years.
She says she was already involved in the organization as a hostess three months before the start of the games. The many hundreds of hostesses had to be prepared and trained. 14 languages were represented, and together with a colleague she was responsible for their use in and around the Olympic grounds. Silvia summarizes the work on the action plan as follows: “We did it with lots and lots of notes hanging on the walls of our rooms.” And emphasizes: “There were no computers back then.”
After the assassination on September 5, everything collapsed like a house of cards, says the queen. In the meantime she had risen to become the personal assistant of Willi Daume, the President of the National Olympic Committee (NOK). On his behalf, she brought a helicopter pilot who had been shot to the hospital with a color television set and wishes for his recovery.
The encounter with this wounded hero was very dear to her heart, says Silvia. Her future husband had already won a place in it at that time. He had looked over her shoulder while she was working in the VIP area – with binoculars. The monarch explains that she laughed at this somewhat bizarre way of keeping her distance. It “clicked” with her Carl Gustaf.
People with dementia are often no longer able to remember such anecdotes from the past, emphasizes Silvia and draws the link to her actual concern for her trip to Munich. “We all need to learn to deal with dementia.” The disease is as common as cancer. It was a terrible experience for her to see her own mother so helpless, says the monarch and says that the mother didn’t want to leave her room. As it turned out, because of a green and blue carpet. “She saw him as an abyss.”
In 1996, the Queen established a foundation and a training program under the name “Silviahemmet” for carers (“You are the bridge to the memory of the patients”), nurses and doctors. She’s actually rather modest, she says. “But I wanted to use my name to give status to the people who take care of people with dementia.”