Cycling in Buchenwald - Buchenwald Memorial

Newspaper clipping with a black and white photograph. Three cyclists at a victory ceremony with their arms raised in the Hitler salute. To the left of them is the Reichsportführer Hans von Tschammer and Osten.

Deutschland-Rundfahrt Bicycle Race 1937 A Special Test in Weimar

Sixty-eight professional cyclists set off on the first leg of the Deutschland-Rundfahrt cycling race, a precursor of today's Deutschland-Tour, on June 6, 1937. After a six-year pause, this was the first time that the international race had been held in...

Portrait photo of Frans Hotag. He is smiling.

Franz Hotag A Professional Cyclist and Member of the Resistance

Frans Hotag (1920–1945) originated from Stabroek not far from Antwerp. Cycling was his passion from his early youth onward. He made a name for himself early on, participating in many youth competitions in his cycling-enthused country of Belgium.

André Bach on a country road with a bicycle.

André Bach An Avid Cyclist in the Résistance

A memorial at the summit of Col d’Aubisque, a mountain pass in the French Pyrenees Mountains, was dedicated to André Bach in 1948. Generations of Tour de France participants have passed this monument since. But who was André Bach?

Alfred Mottard Tour de France 1920

June 27, 1920 was the highpoint of Belgian Alfred Mottard's (1892–1945) cycling career. On this day, he was among the 113 cyclists starting in the 14th Tour de France in Paris. However, the race ended quickly for him. During the first leg of the race,...

Alfred Salomon at the inauguration of the new synagogue in Bochum. He is standing at a lectern decorated with flowers and a microphone. He is wearing a black suit and a black kippah.

Alfred Salomon Racing under a Pseudonym

In 1985, at the early age of six, Alfred Salomon (1919–2013) became a member of the Westfalie cycling club. He came from a Jewish family and was an avid cyclist. His uncle Moritz Lindau had played a significant role in facilitating the construction of...

Death note for André Dekeyser, dated June 1945. Next to a photo of the deceased on his racing bike is obituary text.

André Dekyser A Hopeful Young Cyclist

"Racing Cyclist André Dekyser Has Died. A Victim of the Nazis" – read the headline of the sports section of the June 15, 1945, edition of "Roode Vaan," the newspaper of the Belgian Communist Party. Five weeks prior, André Dekeyser (1922–1945) had...

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The organizers of the race had originally planned for the route to cut through the Buchenwald Memorial, but this was then changed after objections were raised by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation and others. Both the foundation and the organizers agreed that the race crossing Ettersberg Mountain needed to serve as an opportunity to critically examine the historical entanglement of the sport of cycling with the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. As a contribution to the 2021 Deutschland Tour, we posted six articles on our Facebook page on the history of cycling under National Socialism and on cyclists who had been deported to Buchenwald.

The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation was only informed about the planned bicycle race in July of 2021. There was too little time to develop or prepare any accompanying events. The six articles merely highly specific aspects of the topic. Using the Deutschland-Rundfahrt bicycle race of 1937 as an example, they demonstrate how deeply German professional cycling was linked with the Nazi state. It also commemorated cyclists who were persecuted as Jews or for engaging in resistance movements against the German occupiers in France, Belgium, or other countries.