Book Review Of Night By Oliver Hilmes

The meaning of a place could change very quickly – as an example the Olympic stadium in Berlin. As an illustration, the Olympiastadium in Berlin, originally build for the Olympic summer games in 1936, is a big track and field stadium, which is today only used once a year for a track and field meet. Regarding this, when one is standing in front of it, one can see two big towers with the Olympic rings between them. In the background, one can see the walls of the stadium. At the other side is the marathon gate with the bowl for the Olympic fire in its middle. In addition, on the wall at this gate one can find the names of the winners of the Olympics. Furthermore, the track is lower than the surrounding, so that only the upper part of the tribune

Before writing this book, the author did a lot of research to find parts of the film material from Leni Riefenstahl, newspapers, journals, police protocols or press releases. Plus, the book has sixteen chapters, one for each day with a daily weather report at the beginning. For example, starts the book with chapter one: Saturday, 1st August 1936 followed by the weather report “Report of the Reichswetterdienstes for Berlin: very cloudy with some rain. Moderate wind from southwest to west. A little nippy. 19 degree Fahrenheit.” All in all, with reading this book one can get a good summary of how the German tried to hide their Nazi strategies. Another important part of the book is the American author Thomas Wolfe who liked Berlin. Further, the author describes, that the German regime tried to hide their racism during the Olympic summer games. Rather, they tried to show the world what a beautiful country they are, while they began already to plan the world war two. On the other side, they also used every possibility to show their power. For example, a demonstration of the Hitler Youth, “where about twenty-nine thousand boys and girls stand to attention. “ To sum up, by reading this book it feels like one would be see the Olympic games and additionally the author presents many background

Usually, one will visit the stadium for a meeting called ISTAF, where international stars and the German elite will have a competition. During the last few years the organizer tries to make this meet more attractive for the German public. In detail, they try to market the meet a little bit as a spectacular show and not as boring, as the sport is awfully seen in many eyes. However, ther is also the opportunity that one will visit one of the many soccer games and wonder how much this place has changed from the origin Olympic stadium. Additionally, most of the people who support the soccer games are not really interested in track and field and probably they do not know many facts about the Olympic games in 1936. Possibly, they do not even realize that the stadium was built to host the Olympic games. In general, Soccer is not known for the highest academic grade in Germany and maybe it is natural for the visitors, that the stadium is a soccer