Page 71 - Olympism in Socialism

was also administered as the state's de
facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors
occupied by the United States, United
Kingdom and France known collectively as West
Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western
nations were sealed off from the GDR by the
Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it
was brought down in 1989.

SPORTS IN GDR
In the towns, parishes, public enterprises and
cooperative farms of the German Democratic
Republic in recent years ‘good conditions have
been created for everybody to go in for sports,
either for his pleasure and relaxation, to promote
his health or to keep fit till old age.
Participation in physical culture and sports is
guaranteed to the citizens in the GDR’s
Constitution, in the Youth and Education Act, in
the law on local people’s representations and
their bodies, and even in the Labour Code. This
humanistic concern of making physical culture
and sports accessible to the entire people is in
harmony with the very nature of the policies
pursued by the working class and its party, the
Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which
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