21st World Games of the Paralyzed, Heidelberg 1972 - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1972 - 40 Pfennig

From August 1 to 10, 1972, the XXI. World games of the paralyzed instead. There are 1,000 active athletes from 42 nations registered for this event, who will compete in archery, basketball, table tennis, athletics, wheelchair time trial, wheelchair slalom, fencing, bowling, weightlifting, snooker and swimming. The World Games 1972 are under the patronage of Federal President Heinemann. They will be officially opened on Wednesday, August 2, 1972. In 1944, Prof. Ludwig Guttmann established a national center for the treatment of paraplegics in Stoke Mandeville, near London. He recognized the enormous therapeutic importance of the sport and incorporated it into the treatment plan of his patients. His goal was to activate the paralyzed person as early as possible and to increase his ability to compensate. More and more sports were opened up to the paraplegics. Inevitably, this form of sporting activity in the therapeutic sense of competitive sports, because the performance measurement for this group of people represents an essential form of self-affirmation. In 1948, the Stoke Mandeville Games were held for the first time with 16 participants. From this initially purely national event developed the international world games for paralyzed people, which were carried out in 1952 for the first time with 130 participants from Germany and abroad. Today, the International Stoke Mandeville Committee is joined by national organizations from more than 50 countries. The games are held every year in Stoke Mandeville with the exception of the Olympic Games, where they are hosted in the host country of the Olympic Games. In 1960 they were first performed in Rome, 1964 in Tokyo and 1968 because of unfavorable climatic conditions not in Mexico, but in Tel Aviv. The motif of the stamp was taken from an amateur photograph and photographically converted (ton-line) in line. This was followed by a strong manual revision with the aim of achieving an aesthetic dynamic reproduction of a paralyzed person in a wheelchair. The emblem appears on all official statements for the world games of the paralyzed.