Faust's Gold: Inside The East German Doping Machine [Hardcover]

Steven Ungerleider (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2001

For nearly twenty-five years, East Germany's corrupt sports organization dominated international athletics. While the German Democratic Republic's secret "State Plan" was in effect, more than ten thousand unsuspecting young athletes-- some as young as twelve years old-- were given massive doses of performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. These athletes achieved miraculous success in international competitions, including the Olympics, but for many of them, their physical and emotional health was permanently damaged.

Faust's Gold draws on the revelations of the ongoing trials of former GDR coaches, doctors, and sports officials who have now confessed to conducting ruthless medical experiments on young and talented athletes selected for Olympic training camps. It also draws on the extensive research of Brigitte Berendonk, who escaped from East Germany to begin a decade-long crusade to bring justice to her fellow athletes, and that of her husband, Professor Werner Franke. Berendonk's story, and those of her colleagues in the GDR, offers a unique insight into a bizarre regime.

Faust's Gold is a true-life detective story that plunges into the dark, secretive world of the GDR doping scam, where elite competitors and their families are up against a formidable opponent: the East German secret police, known as the STASI. What emerges is a complex tapestry of the politicized modern Olympics that culminates in a powerful testimony to the massive wrong done by one Eastern Bloc nation to its world-class athletes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this informative but ultimately disappointing account, Ungerleider (Mental Training for Peak Performance; Beyond Strength: Psychological Profiles of Olympic Athletes with Jackie Golding), a psychologist and journalist, traces the first major trial of former East German sports officials in 1998 and 1999. Under a strict directive from its highest political office, between the 1960s and the '80s the GDR gave steroids to more than 10,000 uninformed youngsters as part of its quest for dominance in worldwide sports events. Basing his reports on interviews with former athletes and officials, Ungerleider details the extensive health problems that the female athletes suffered as a result of the "vitamins" that they took, ranging from short-term concerns including raging libidos and unnatural hair-growth, to serious, long-term problems including depression, birth defects, heart failure and tumors. While poignant, these stories begin to repeat themselves. One of the more interesting revelations, however, is of the conflict some of the former Olympians feel: on the one hand is their patriotism and sense of obligation to the individuals who helped make them superior athletes; on the other is their sense of shame at the possibility of having won medals unfairly and the corresponding desire that the truth about the doping be told. Unfortunately, the main narrative of the trial fails to develop any momentum. Ungerleider does not examine the effects of the doping on East German society or on the Cold War; nor does he seriously address the implications of systemic sports drug use, even though, as the recent Tour de France scandal shows, they apply in the post-Communist world as well.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

East Germany was once a power in international sports. Its athletes established world records and set new standards for athletic performance. But many people correctly suspected that these achievements were the result of the use of steroids and other illegal substances. Ungerleider, director of a nonprofit research corporation that specializes in substance abuse prevention, looks into the doping of athletes and the subsequent rise of the East German sports empire. He successfully uses trial records and an athlete's testimony to trace the use of steroids in state-sponsored training programs. This intriguing book captures the reader's attention, but at times the narrative becomes melodramatic. Nevertheless, Ungerleider does an excellent job of showing the extreme steps that political leaders will take to achieve glory in sports and how young, na ve athletes are negatively affected in this process. Recommended for public libraries. Thomas A. Auger, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (June 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312269773
• ISBN-13: 978-0312269777
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #660,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faust's Gold: a must read, September 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Faust's Gold: Inside The East German Doping Machine (Hardcover)

As a physician whose contact with competitive sports is limited to that of a spectator, I read this book with only a vague notion of the doping of athletes and the use of performance-enhancing drugs. I considered these activities as a minor and peripheral part of the Olympic games, believing that the IOC could and did expose them before they might influence the outcome.
"Faust's Gold" shattered my naivete about the glory of international sports competition and revealed an unremovable stain on my otherwise noble profession by a few despicable East German doctors. Perhaps other readers were aware; I wasn't, and I wish everyone else will read this book before watching the next Olympics.
I admire Ungerleider's ability to treat a politically and emotionally charged subject in a scholarly manner while keeping the reader riveted from beginning to end. A must read.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Faust's Gold, October 2, 2001

By 

robert voy, m.d. (Las Vegas, Nevada, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faust's Gold: Inside The East German Doping Machine (Hardcover)

Steven ungerleider has done an extrordinary job of researching a period of time during which drug abuse and cheating in international sport was unbelieved by sport officials, scientist and doctors through out the world (except those in East Germany and Russia). A small country of 17 million people conned the world into believing that there social-economic system could create superior athletes. Many of us, including the author suspected that drugs had to be part of their success. Olympic medals still hang in the halls and are tainted by this episode in sport history. Those that don't seem to appreciate, the problem of drug abuse, and don't lend support for the Olympic effort to rid this scurge on athleticism, will live to see history repeat itself. the shame is the fact that thousand of young developing athletes, emulating and looking up to those athletes will not be able to resist the temptation of drug use, if we continue to allow whatever it takes to win. And, medical consequences in the future will result. Thus far drug abuse abounds at all levels of sport. This book should be read and lauded as a reminder not to let drug abuse continue.
Rober O. Voy, M.D
Author - Drugs, Sport, and Politics (Leisure Press 1991)

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Steroids and East Germany's Sports System, May 21, 2001

By 

Tim Bauer (East Lansing, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Faust's Gold: Inside The East German Doping Machine (Hardcover)

Steven Ungerleider has brought the story of East Germany's state organized sports doping to the US. In under 200 pages one can understand the dark side of anabolic steroid abuse used to glorify East Germany's politically driven win at all costs attitude. This account foucuses mainly on the DDR female swim program and the trials recently held in Berlin to bring justice to those who suffered severe side effects resulting from the steroids they were given while training for Olympic glory.

This book a narrative which makes the consequences of steroid abuse and the DDR regime understandable and personal to most any reader. This is not a scholarly text heavy with references though the information appears to be accurate and eagerly pursued. It is good that this story has made it to the USA so that individually our coaches and athletes can look at their own practices some of which are equally horrific. There is a price for gaining medals at any cost and this book describes just that. Ex-athletes who have died or suffered tumors, deformities, liver damage and had children with major birth defects...

Everyone should know of this system, the good, the bad and the ugly and we all should consider it as sport moves onward. This book will not give detailed insight into the DDR sport system as it focuses on the doping but one can certainly gain an appreciation for the harm that the doping has caused to athletes, athletes who suffered and still suffer due to the state program.

An excellent book that could be a great topic of classroom debate on sport ethics and training.