Werner Seelenbinder - Memorials and Controversy

Memorials and Controversy

On 29 July 1945 an urn containing Seelenbinder's ashes was buried at the site of his old club, the Berolina 03 Sports Club stadium in Berlin. At the same time, the stadium itself was named "Werner-Seelenbinder-Kampfbahn", but as Communism became a bad word in West Berlin, it was renamed "Stadion Neukölln" in 1949. A number of schools, streets and sporting facilities in the former East Germany were named after him. The Werner Seelenbinder Wrestling Tournament is still (2004) held once a year in Berlin. However, the lack of impartiality by both the anti-communist West Germans and the pro-communist East Germans, who raised Werner Seelenbinder to the status of an icon, means that today his historical importance is rather controversial. In an article in the socialist German newspaper Neues Deutschland of 2 August 2004, the director of the Berlin Sports Museum Martina Behrendt said that his role in the resistance movement had been exaggerated in the GDR, and that there were no reliable biographies.

On 2 August 2004 a commemorative speech was held in front of the Neukölln stadium, where Seelenbinder's ashes were buried, by the German socialist PDS party, one hundred years after Seelenbinder's birth. Party members spoke of their regret that the stadium had been renamed. Others mentioned with sadness the renaming of the eastern German "Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle" as "Velodrom im Europasportpark" in 1990 and the renaming of the "Werner-Seelenbinder-Turm" in Leipzig as the "Glockenturm".

On 24 October 2004, the 60th anniversary of Seelenbinder's death, the Neukölln stadium was once again renamed the "Werner-Seelenbinder-Stadion" in his memory.