[5] Dynamo was set up following the multi-sports club model developed in the Soviet Union and adopted throughout Eastern Europe.

From the beginning it had an overtly political as well as sporting agenda and its many successes were always portrayed as a triumph of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Among its founders were former concentration camps prisoners and communist leaders in the fight against National socialists and Social Democrats during the era of the Weimar Republic.

Visits to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park and the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, among other places, were common among the youth athletes of its teams.

Gerhard Kube, Helmut Baierl and Kurt Barthel wrote many poets about the society and its role as a builder of national sports.

The Central Management Office (German: Büro der Zentralen Leitung) (BdZL) of SV Dynamo had 1,400 members in 1989.

Key to East German sporting success was a pyramid system with schoolchildren being assessed for athletic potential and the best (typically the top 2.5%) in each school-year being offered specialised coaching.

Overall, 3,7 million[clarification needed] athletes were in the GDR at the German Sports federation (DTSB) registered in many other successful clubs in 1989.

It is estimated that around 10,000 former athletes bear the physical and mental scars of years of drug abuse,[21] one of them is Rica Reinisch, a triple Olympic champion and world record-setter at the Moscow Games in 1980, has since suffered numerous miscarriages and recurring ovarian cysts.

Athletes like Renate Vogel, silver medalist at the 1972 Olympics in the swimming competitions, were told the injections were vitamins but failed to believe the explanation and quit her sport.

[22] Two former SC Dynamo Berlin club doctors, Dieter Binus, chief of the national women's team from 1976 to 80, and Bernd Pansold, in charge of the sports medicine center in East-Berlin, were committed for trial for allegedly supplying 19 teenagers with illegal substances.

[23] Binus was sentenced in August,[24] Pansold in December 1998 after both being found guilty of administering hormones to underage female athletes from 1975 to 1984.

[25] Virtually no East German athlete ever failed an official drug test, though Stasi files show that many did, indeed, produced positive tests at Kreischa, the Saxon laboratory (German:Zentrale Dopingkontroll-Labor des Sportmedizinischen Dienstes) that was at the time approved by the International Olympic Committee,[26] now called the Institute of Doping Analysis and Sports Biochemistry (IDAS).

[35] A review by SV Dynamo leaders after the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich found that athletes of SV Dynamo won so many medals for East Germany that the sports association would have been placed on a ninth to tenth place on the unofficial list if the sports association had been a national team.

[38] With 280,000 members, it is not surprising that the SV Dynamo multi-sport club has won many championships in East Germany, so that a separate category should be needed.

[39] [40][41] [42] The SV Dynamo sports association awarded various signs, badges, medals and lapel pins to its members.

The badge (which also existed in embroidered form for track suits) shows the logo of the Sports Club Dynamoys on a burgundy granular base with a white "D".

The badges show the familiar logo of the Sports Club Dynamo on a burgundy background with the white convoluted "D".

In the upper right side of the coin the inscription "50 JAHRE 20" is readable, the 50 is the anniversary of the "Soviet Union- Dynamo" and the 20 for the German.

The badge is shaped like a medal with a diameter of 39 mm and is made of enamel and is awarded according to the levels gold, silver or bronze.

It shows on their obverse center, the symbolic representation of four sports, volleyball, gymnastics, athletics, climbing a Eskaladierwand with a soldier.

Enclosed is the symbolism of a transcription SG DYNAMO BERLIN HOHENSCHÖNHAUSEN that determines the lower half of the coin, and the subsequent laurel branches on both sides.

The reverse shows a laurel wreath on the other hand within the logos of the SV Dynamo (bottom right) and top left of the DTSB.

[44] (German: Abzeichen der Internationalen Schießwettkämpfe) The Insignia of the International shooting competitions was awarded by the SV Dynamo.