Sports historian Kay Schiller advocates the games being spread over several cities in the future – and believes that at some point Africa should also get a chance.
Interviewed by
Roman Deininger and Uwe Ritzer
Kay Schiller traveled to Munich for a conference on the role of art in the 1972 Olympics. The historian, born in 1962 in Waldsassen, grew up in Sauerlach, has been a professor of modern European history at the University of Durham in northern England for many years and is now a British citizen – but he hasn’t lost his Bavarian tongue. Before the conference begins in the Rathausgalerie on Saturday morning, he orders a pair of white sausages from a café on Marienplatz, which he professionally cuts up. Schiller specializes in German cultural history and sports history and is editor-in-chief of the magazine “Sport in History”. In 2010, he and his colleague Christopher Young published the standard scientific work on the Munich Games in the USA, which was published in German in 2012 under the title “Munich 1972. Olympic Games under the sign of modern Germany”. In his latest book, “The Fastest Jew in Germany,” Schiller focuses on the track and field athlete and anti-fascist publicist Alex Natan.