Cycling and Buchenwald

On August 27, 2021, cyclists participating in the Deutschland Tour raced across Ettersberg Mountain, not far from the Buchenwald Memorial and city of Weimar. Originally, the organizers of this multi-day, professional cycling event had routed the race through the memorial site. As a result of public outcry and objections voiced by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial Foundations, the route was altered. The route of the race across Ettersberg Mountain was the starting point for a critical examination of links between the sport of cycling and the history of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp – a previously unexplored topic. Six profiles were compiled as a result, which among others take readers to Weimar in 1937, the Tour des France in 1921, the cycling-enthused country of Belgium, and the summit of Col d’Aubisque in the French Pyrenees Mountains. The six steles of this outdoor exhibition demonstrate by the example of the 1937 Deutschland-Rundfahrt bicycle race just how deeply embedded the sport of cycling was in the National Socialist State. It also honours cyclists persecuted because of their Jewish origins or for resisting the German occupation in other countries.