Athletes from Germany (GER) have appeared in only 18 of the 20 editions of the Winter Olympic Games as they were not invited to two events after the World Wars, in 1924 and 1948. Germany hosted the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and had been selected to host in 1940 again.
The nation appeared 8 times as a single country (IOC code GER), before World War II and again after German reunification in 1990. Three times, from 1956 to 1964, German athletes from the separate states in West and East competed as a United Team of Germany, which is currently listed by the IOC as EUA, not GER.
Due to partition under occupation that resulted in three post-war German states, German athletes took part seven times for the contemporary states they lived in, in 1952, and from 1968 to 1988. The all-time results of German athletes are thus divided among the designations GER, EUA, FRG, GDR and also SAA (the Saarland only took part in the 1952 Summer games and won no medal).
Famous quotes containing the words germany and/or winter:
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“Within the circuit of this plodding life
There enter moments of an azure hue,
Untarnished fair as is the violet
Or anemone, when the spring strews them
By some meandering rivulet, which make
The best philosophy untrue that aims
But to console man for his grievances.
I have remembered when the winter came,”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)