Carl Diem - Torch Relay

Torch Relay

On a visit to Greece for an Olympic conference in 1934, Diem and Lewald imagined a new symbolic pageant that would cloak the German games with the ancient Greek mantle: the transit of a lit Olympic flame from Greece to Berlin by a relay of torch-bearing runners. While the relay is sometimes believed to be an ancient tradition, it was in fact the wholly modern creation of Lewald and Diem: the ancient games included a ritual flame commemorating the theft of fire from the gods by Prometheus, but no torch relay.

On June 30, 1936, the first torch-flame was kindled in Olympia, Greece, in the ruins of the Temple of Hera, by 15 robed "virgins," using a concave mirror focusing the sun's rays, all under the supervision of a "high priestess." It was carried to the Acropolis in Athens for a special invocation, and then relayed along the 3,422-kilometer distance to the Olympic stadium in Berlin by an equal number of young Aryan-looking runners, each of whom took the flame a single kilometer.

On its way, the flame passed through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia; those countries, and Greece itself, would all be under Nazi domination within ten years. The event was filmed by Hitler's favorite director, Leni Riefenstahl, and branded with the giants of German industry: the lighting-mirrors were made by the Zeiss corporation, and the torches themselves, fueled with magnesium to prevent them from going out in bad weather, were constructed by Krupp, the huge steel and munitions conglomerate that armed Germany for both world wars.

The final leg of the relay was completed on August 1 by Fritz Schilgen, a German electrical engineer and national champion runner, who ran into the stadium and lit the Olympic cauldron to open the games. Schilgen was not actually competing; he was selected by officials, including Riefenstahl, for the grace and aesthetic appeal of his running style. Diem was in Hitler's party as the Fuehrer presided over the ceremony; when Hitler strode across the stadium to his official box, a five-year-old girl presented him with a bouquet of flowers. The child was Diem's daughter, Gudrun.

The tradition of a torch relay from Greece to the host country of the Olympic games has been continued at every Olympiad since then. Even the ritual kindling of the flame with a mirror on the grounds of the Temple of Hera remains virtually intact as the official method of starting the relay.