DSV critic Bernd Berkhahn: “There is no work being done structurally, there is no work being done in the future.” Image: picture alliance / Eibner press photo
In the German Swimming Association there is helplessness before the general meeting. Leadership problems are omnipresent. There is a lack of structures and strategies.
Everyone agrees on one thing: the German Swimming Association (DSV) is not bankrupt. That’s the good news before its members meet for their meeting in Kassel on Saturday. And solvency is therefore not at risk if it is clear whether and which financial obligations arise from the dispute with his former national diving coach Lutz Buschkow. The trial is scheduled to continue before the Halle Labor Court in February 2024.
Buschkow was fired after Jan Hempel made public sexual abuse by his former coach over a period of 14 years in the summer of 2022 and accused Buschkow of being an accomplice since 1997. Buschkow denies this, he only found out about his suffering on August 10, 2022 through a request from the journalists who reported on Hempel, Buschkow said in the FAZ on August 30, 2022. “There will be sacrifices, no matter what,” Hempel said on ARD. In his time, only success counted for the DSV. At the end of October, he entered into a settlement with the association: compensation and compensation amounting to 300,000 euros immediately, with a further 300,000 euros payable in monthly installments over ten years.
