Summary:

Heikki Roiko-Jokela, Sport connects people - Finland´s and German Democratic Republic´s co-operation and lines in sport and physical exercise.

Throughout centuries sports has connected nations. The superiority of nations has been measured by sport success, and especially during the Cold War the nations harnessed sports as a part of the competition of social systems. Sports and physical exercise in general became an essential, inseparable part of the nation-building. The nations with different social systems could co-operate especially also when it was not a question of competing or world-class sports but in general of physical sciences and of activities that gave benefits for the whole society. A good example of this is the co-operation between the totalitarian German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the democratic Finland.

This article studies how co-operation in physical sciences between GDR and Finland was organized in practice, what this co-operation included in the early 1970s, how were the goals for the future agreed on and how the representatives of GDR ‘marketed’ their system and what did the Finns think about it.

The co-operation between the GDR and Finland was based on the mutual cultural exchange agreement. The forms of the co-operation were framed by the states. In practice, the professionals of the physical sciences were responsible for the connections on ‘the grassroots level’. The society and physical exercise were integrated: community planning and physical (the meaning of physical exercise in civil enlightenment) education were mutual interests. Sports medical science and its utilizing also in public health as one sector of training was differentiated as a strong, rising sector of its own.