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.