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The Central European Games – an Unrealised Polish Project from the 1920s to Hold an International Sports Event
Kamil Potrzuski
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6798-7629
Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego Józefa Piłsudskiego w Warszawie
Arkadiusz Włodarczyk
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2263-2474
Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego Józefa Piłsudskiego w Warszawie
Remembrance and Justice, Vol. 41 No. 1 (2023), pages: 284-305
Publication date: 2023-10-10
https://doi.org/10.48261/pis234113
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Abstract
The aim of this article is to reconstruct, describe and explain the context in which representatives of the Polish Olympic movement took up the concept of the Central European Games under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee, as well as to answer the question about why this initiative, despite its potential importance for the development of the Olympic movement and its consequences in international politics, failed. The source base consisted mainly of archival documents stored in the Archives of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the Central Military Archives in Warsaw and the Olympic Studies Center in Lausanne. The article established that the concept of the Central European Games, put forward in 1920 by Elwood Brown, was promoted in 1921–1922 by Polish Olympic movement activists Stefan Lubomirski and Edward Wittig, but did not gain the backing of members of the IOC, including Pierre de Coubertin himself, causing the project to eventually collapse. The reasons for the failure of the project were determined to be a lack of trust in Poland as a relatively new member of the IOC, doubts as to the apolitical character of the project, fears about its usefulness in the Olympic movement and the possible downgrading of the Olympic Games, and finally concern over the political repercussions in Central and Eastern Europe in the event of the successful completion of the project.
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