It already had its own charm when, at yesterday's opening ceremony of the Winter Games in the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, right at the beginning, still counting down to 24 solar periods of an old Chinese farmer's calendar, the keyword "awakening of the insects" (as a sign of spring) showed pictures of in their Completely defaced athletes were shown in competition equipment - as if the cliché of the Chinese ant people were now also valid for all those athletes who have to submit to the national regulations of a dictatorship at the "meeting of the youth of the world".

But the Olympic movement has had experience with such framework conditions since 1936 – only that the Berlin Summer Games at that time were awarded to the German capital before the Nazis ruled there.

But the aesthetics of Olympic pomp still benefit today from Berlin and its opulent camouflage spectacle of totalitarianism; the most prominent example is the torch relay, which made its debut in 1936. Did you want to burn everything down? No, he did just as well in Leni Riefenstahl's notorious Olympic film vehicle, and every opening ceremony afterwards learned from the virtuosity of this director in staging ornamentation of the masses - especially the one that Riefenstahl's cinema colleague Zhang Yimou had organized in Beijing in 2008: with 15,000 participants on the lawn at the time.

This time, the repeat offender Zhang, himself a master of all masses, had to be content with a small group of a few hundred participants due to the pandemic, and they jumped around like little children when the athletes marched in instead of standing in a martial trellis.

The Riefenstahl aesthetic has become rusty - at least that's nice to see.

Of course there was still enough flickering and droning.

In addition, simulated flurries of snow and doves of peace And in Zhang's festival choreography there is plenty of dancing in line.

As well as an originally edited film clip in which groups of Chinese imitated typical movements of winter sports enthusiasts in everyday life.

However, not the aiming of rifles in biathlon.

People want to appear harmless in Beijing.

Despite the bombast, despite the ballast.

And we hadn't seen a glowing snowflake either.

That doesn't seem safe to us.