Henrich Misersky died of cancer in his Thuringian homeland. For three decades, the former track and field athlete and coach was one of the most important voices in the debate about coming to terms with GDR sport and its criminal side effects. He refused to dope his athletes and his children.
Henner Misersky (1940 – 2023)
RIP, Henner. My condolences go out to Ilse Misersky, Antje and Heike and the other relatives.
I knew Henner Misersky since February 1992, when his daughter Antje became Olympic biathlon champion in Albertville and immediately afterwards, live on ARD, Henner held up a mirror to German sports officials, which was a sensation at the time, and reminded them that everything was done for medals and therefore numerous ones Coaches, supervisors and officials who had a doping and Stasi past were taken over…
Albertville 1992.
… a colleague then attacked Misersky in a very shameful newspaper comment. Without digging through the archives, this is what I remember:
“If only you had remained silent, Henner!”
Of course not. Misersky did not remain silent. Not until the end. And that is exactly the core of the matter and, to a certain extent, his life’s theme.
So-called warning voicesdie Uncomfortabledie Arguabledie criticas it is always said in the media (the wording is usually imprecise, stupid and cowardly), they are the ones who push issues forward. They also ensure that the past is debated, even though the perpetrators and those responsible for the sports-political complex have no interest in publicly discussing these unpleasant facts.
I just wrote “sports-political complex”, but of course that applies to all areas. This is constantly demonstrated by the extremely annoying debate about the GDR, triggered by strange books.
But back to Henner Misersky. I had him on the phone at the time and apologized for the dirty comment made by someone from the GDR yesterday, even though I had no responsibility for it. I don’t remember when I first met him and Antje and talked about it, it could have been in Lillehammer in 1994. It hasn’t been easy since then, for anyone. In my article “The poison of doping. Blackbox Ines Geipel.” I wrote in March of this year, among other things:
This entire big, sad, crazy story of feuding former comrades-in-arms, of lies and deceit, of wounds and injuries, of poetry and truth, of vanities, righteousness, envy and resentment, hatred and malice, transfiguration and hubris, of forgetting and warning Instrumentalizing and educating… is more evidence of how the poison of doping works – on all sides.
Deep. Brutally. Long-lasting. Across generations.
The poison of doping comes in different physical states. It’s powerful, brutal, and has a long half-life. It works across multiple generations. It also seems ideological. It decomposes.
And this poison ultimately harms even those who are committed to education. It damages those who, as trainers in a totalitarian state, refused the doping system, like Henner Misersky did.
I hope you find peace, dear Henner.
I just dug through the mailbox. In the last email that popped up from Henner Misersky there was this passage:
“I’m pretty helpless and overwhelmed. This gap-journalism and the inadequate knowledge of sports history are giving us a hard time…”
That too.
I would like to leave it at that for today. What is outlined here using the example of Henner Misersky’s life and work is one of the core themes in this theater. Especially in the years 2009 and following, there were numerous articles about doping and the reappraisal of GDR sport, which often had hundreds of comments – each one. They were hard, important, tiring, fruitful, annoying, stupid and completely wonderful debates. Like in real life.
Herbert Fischer-Solms, Werner Franke, Gerhard Treutlein, Robert Hartmann, Henner Misersky – including Andrew Jennings – with their work, their perseverance and their experiences, they have all fertilized, helped to determine and repeatedly pushed the major public debates about the excesses of the top-class sports system.
Yes, the so-called ones warning voicesdie Uncomfortabledie Arguabledie critic.
Where would we be without them? How much less would we know? What would we have missed? How many times have we failed to fight and inspire?
That remains.
They have all been gone since 2022. Tears.
This time my heartfelt thanks go to Henner Misersky.
Once upon a time. Officially the medal was called: “Heidi Krieger Anti-Doping Honorary Award”
Of course Henner Misersky (like Antje Harvey, his daughter) also deserves it Heidi Krieger Medal preserved, which has its own sad history in several respects. From the pool of various authors available here, there are also some additional reading instructions on the major topic. With the Geipel text from March, I had initially used up my strength and willingness to work on this consuming topic. It won’t stay that way. There are certainly dozens of other contributions that were important, on which many people worked together here, in the dispute, because the discussions were important.
– Das Gift des Dopings. Blackbox Ines Geipel.
– What is left of the day (104): the practices in the Doping Victim Aid Association
– Johanna Sperling: “Please reject it, be proud of it!” (A small text, but for me one of the most important texts and one of the most important encounters of my journalistic life.)
– Grit Hartmann: The deputy: Gustav-Adolf Schur and the German Sports Hall of Fame (A fundamental, absolutely excellent text about these types of debates.)
They should have the final word: Antje and Henner Misersky: “First the medals, then the morale!”.