Posted Sunday 22 July 2012
"At the opening ceremony, quite a number of athletes refused to acknowledge Hitler with the Nazi salute and reportedly Ivanovic was one of them," Professor Peter Beck, Emeritus Professor of History at Kingston University and author of 'Scoring for Britain' (1999) said. "The 1936 games were a huge propaganda coup for the Germans - reinforced of course by the fact that they topped the medals table. Although Ivanovic was a sportsman, it appears that he viewed the Games as a political event and in refusing to acknowledge Hitler would have been trying to undermine the propagandist impact of the event."
Around 4,000 athletes - including Great Britain's 208-strong squad - took part in the Berlin Games in the summer of 1936. The German team won the Games with a medal count of nearly 90.
A key piece in the collection is a photo of Wartburg Castle in Eisenach, Germany, which Ivanovic had signed by many of the athletes and other well-known figures he met at the 1936 games. Among the names whose signatures he collected are famous American sprinter Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, and the British Gold medal-winning relay team. Also featured on the photo is the signature of Harold Abrahams, whose story inspired the popular and recently re-released British film Chariots of Fire which has also been adapted for the London stage. In celebration of London 2012, this signed photograph has been restored and digitised by Kingston University Archives and can now be viewed online by the public.
As well as being a successful athlete, Vane Ivanovic was a shipping magnate, diplomat and philanthropist. During the Second World War he was able to use his wealth and connections on behalf of the Allied Forces in a number of ways behind the scenes, persuading other Yugoslav shipping owners to make their ships available to the allies. During his many years of exile from Communist Yugoslavia after the war, Ivanovic worked towards a democratic and united Yugoslavia.