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Award ceremony for the Nordic Combined 1968 in Grenoble with the winners Franz Keller and Andreas Kunz (right) on the bronze rank
Photo: IMAGO / Horstmüller
The biography of Andreas Kunz is one that leads deep into German-German history.
It's a Cold War tale of friendship, betrayal, escape.
It basically has all the ingredients for a thriller, actually one wonders why it hasn't been filmed yet.
Kunz died on New Year's Day at the age of 75.
He was the GDR's first official medalist at the Olympic Games when he won bronze in the Nordic combined in Grenoble in 1968.
Behind it was a drama.
For the first time as an independent nation at the start
You can't tell the story of Andreas Kunz without Ralph Pöhland.
Both combiners, both teammates, both were among the world's best in combiners in 1968.
Above all, Pöhland was one of the big favorites for Olympic gold.
It was the first Olympic Games at which the GDR was allowed to appear as its own sports nation.
That alone was an enormous sport-political success for the SED regime, now the only thing missing was the corresponding medals.
Pöhland should also take care of that.
But he had his own plans, which were in complete contradiction to what the GDR superiors were planning to do with him.
In January 1968 the GDR combiners prepared for the games in Le Brassus, Switzerland, and it was the opportunity for Pöhland.
Covered in darkness, he climbed outside over the balcony of the team quarters.
There, with the engine running, Georg Thoma, a combined athlete from the western part of Germany, Olympic champion from 1960, world champion from 1966, a sports hero in the west was waiting.
Both had become friends over the years.
Escape with the Porsche
Thoma is privy to Pöhland's escape plans, he has already driven up his Porsche.
Pöhland gets in and both of them speed towards the German border.
The coup was a success, the sporting management of the GDR was taken by surprise.
When Pöhland went missing the next morning at the team breakfast, Andreas Kunz looked in his room and found it empty.
He looks down from the balcony, sees the tracks in the snow and knows right away.
The GDR can forget its Olympic gold plans for Pöhland.
The big favorite stormed shortly before the games, but Kunz is still there and the GDR coaches are now making him a beacon of hope.
The sports management also responded to the escape in another way: The squad for Grenoble was rigorously cut, from 97 to only 57 athletes.
A Pöhland case should not be repeated, not in the shop window of the world, Olympia.
On the fifth day of the Games, on February 12th, the decision in the Nordic Combined will be made.
Pöhlandt actually wanted to participate, for the Federal Republic, but this was forbidden by the IOC under political pressure from the Soviets and the GDR.
The way is clear for two other Germans: Kunz storms to bronze in the cross-country ski run, gold goes to his West colleague Franz Keller.
In between, the Swiss Alois Kälin placed silver.
And for Kunz there would have been even more if he hadn't broken his ski bindings twice on the trail.
A telegram from Ulbricht
Bronze for Kunz, bronze for the GDR, for the first time an athlete for the GDR is on the podium.
Even if, as in the previous games, it is still not the GDR anthem, but the Beethoven ode to joy.
That was the compromise that the IOC had made with the two German associations.
But even without "risen from the ruins": Kunz is celebrated at home.
Walter Ulbricht, the strong man in East Berlin, sends a congratulatory telegram to France.
As a reward, Kunz is even allowed to visit Paris for three days after the games, but he was given so little money that he can only look at the sights of the metropolis from the outside.
Kunz, a hero - but that only lasts two years.
Because the athlete is not at all willing to adhere to the guidelines of his superiors, to avoid any contact with Western athletes.
And again Ralph Pöhland becomes his fate.
Swapping jackets is fatal
At a competition in Finland, Kunz Pöhland, meanwhile part of the Federal Republic of Germany, met again in 1970.
Instead of avoiding him, the two arrange to meet for a drink, it will be a happy evening.
The suede jacket that Pöhland bought in the west changes hands.
Kunz likes it so much that he buys it from his old teammate for 350 Ostmarks.
He'll curse this jacket.
Because weeks later, Kunz's father chatted out the deal between the two former teammates in a wine-blissful mood, and the Stasi listened in.
Kunz is quoted as a state security officer, he is insulted as a traitor, also because he refuses to work as an informant for the MfS himself, and his sports career is over in one fell swoop.
He has to move from Klingenthal, the winter sports metropolis, to Zwickau, after which he will be monitored by the Stasi for years.
This period of suffering is only over with the end of the GDR.
Only then was he able to see Franz Keller, the opponent of Grenoble, and Pöhland again.
The suede jacket, he told SPIEGEL in 2018, hadn't been around for a long time because it was so difficult to care for anyway.
