U Birgit Palzkill’s sports career almost wouldn’t have happened. In elementary school, Palzkill tells it the “Contemporary Witnesses Sport” projectback in the 1950s in the home village in North Rhine-Westphalia, there were no physical education classes at all, but there was still a sports grade – judged by body figure. Palzkill got a four. And then I would never have gone to the sports club myself. Fortunately, years later, Birgit Palzkill was sent to the sports club by a teacher. Otherwise German sport would have lost a great pioneering figure.
Women pioneers in sport are often talked about after medals. Birgit Palzkill, now non-binary and active in women’s sports at the time, also collected medals. First as a shot putter, she became vice-European junior champion in 1970. The goal is the 1972 Olympics, but the West German shot putters are not allowed to take part – also because of a lack of medal chances the doped Eastern Bloc women. Birgit Palzkill then switched to basketball, becoming a competitive athlete and national player again, as well as a cup winner and three-time German champion.
But deeper traces in sport are often left by those who open up discourse and initiate change. This movement in the truest sense will be Birgit Palzkill’s great legacy: Palzkill is one of the first people to research and speak about lesbian women in top-class sport. And the first person to publish a study on sexual violence in German sports in 1998.
Even as an athlete, Birgit Palzkill notices certain things. Once they play at a European Basketball Championship against Danes who compete without a bra – and the audience cheers every time a player has big breasts. The athletes don’t even understand what it’s about at first, then Palzkill realizes: “People were there to look at women’s bodies. I found that very degrading.” As a shot putter, Palzkill notices the often dependent sexual relationships between athletes and coaches. The female shot putters, who are ridiculed as men’s wives, also want to enhance themselves. They are important memories for later.
Formative women’s movement
It will soon become clear how influential it is when athletes are not fully professional and have other horizons. Birgit Palzkill, a teacher as her main job, moved to Cologne in 1976 – and came into contact with the women’s movement. Suddenly many of my own experiences in the world of sports take on a political theoretical basis. Palzkill begins to live a lesbian life, but lesbian life is often still taboo even in the women’s movement. Actually, in order to start a conversation, Birgit Palzkill is starting an interview project top lesbian athletes. What is opening up is a huge dark field, the interest is overwhelming. In 1990 a pioneering study was carried out.
Birgit Palzkill ends up on the front page of the Bild-Newspaper. The tabloid headlines, as Palzkill reports to the contemporary witness project, are lurid: “The cute tennis girls – almost all of them lesbian.” But there is huge support from female athletes. Birgit Palzkill does not experience any negative consequences – unlike in other areas. In 1998, on behalf of the then Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Palzkill published the first German study to sexual violence in sport.
“I couldn’t even imagine what Shitstorm meant.” Insults, massive pressure, a ban on giving further training. Perhaps the biggest taboo is that the two of them talk about structures – because supposedly there are only isolated cases. The study was initially kept under wraps, but then published under pressure from NRW Prime Minister Johannes Rau. And Birgit Palzkill notices: The press is picking up on the topic. Something is happening.
There are many more lives in this one eventful and moving life. Like Birgit Palzkill’s role in the peace movement, sport was also at the forefront. And in the course of her long life, Birgit Palzkill has enjoyed experiencing: Things really do change. Also in the structures. Birgit Palzkill has been the independent representative for protection against sexual violence for the State Sports Association of North Rhine-Westphalia since 2017.