The history of the Olympic Movement in Germany is also a mirror of the deep social and political changes in this century.
On German territory two world wars, the empire, the Weimarer Republic, the "Third Reich" of the National Socialists, occupying powers and occupation zones, the special status of Berlin, the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR, the Saarland - which had at times been independent regarding olympic matters - and now the Federal Republic of Germany extended after the unification by the former national territory of the GDR have set direct general conditions and effected the organization of olympic sport.
The olympic organization in Germany was one of the first which came into being after the revival of the Olympic Games of the antiquity by Baron de Coubertin at the end of the last century. Eighteen months after the constitution of the International Olympic Committee on 23rd June 1894 in Paris the Committee for the Participation of Germany in the Olympic Games 1896 in Athens had been founded on 13th December 1895 in Berlin by the chemist Dr. Willibald Karl August Gebhardt. The hereditary prince Philipp Ernst to Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst was elected as first president. He was followed by nine presidents who led the Committee - which meanwhile had changed its name six times - through varied times until the year 1945.
