Place of honour. Your stories - your donations - your sports museum!
21.9.2022 – 26.2.2023
Studio exhibition
Böttchergäßchen Building, Böttchergäßchen 3, 04109 Leipzig
There are many reasons for giving presents. Giving a present is a way of expressing appreciation of the recipient. And it is also a way of handing something over to someone who will take good care of it.
Every year, the Leipzig Sports Museum receives around 300 to 500 donations for its sports history collection. Many of these objects are found by chance at flea markets or in attics, while others are well-preserved personal treasures. As a result, athletes, their families, sports enthusiasts and people working in sports provide a constant flow of fascinating new exhibits for the collection of the Leipzig Sports Museum.
Many of those making donations wish for a place of honour for their item in the museum’s exhibition. En route to our new sports museum in Leipzig, selected donations from our collections are already allocated their place of honour today. We tell the – partly astonishing and partly bizarre – stories behind these items and their donation to the museum.
These artefacts include the following:
One Leipzig citizen presented the museum with ice skates, a rare foldable model dating back to 1900, still with the original oilcloth and linen bag and adjusting spanner. These skates originally belonged to the donor’s grandfather, a former Leipzig innkeeper, who had probably received the skates as a surety for an unpaid bill and never used them himself.
Most recently, a sports reporter who covered the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 gave us a COVID-19 warning sign from the Olympic stadium and a large number of related hygiene products. These were intended to ensure that, along with the other athletes from all over the world, the Leipzig athletes were able to safely participate in this major sports event.
With our exhibition, we hope to encourage others to make donations and help to preserve another piece of central German sports history for posterity.