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Between success and persecution: Jewish Stars in German Sports till 1933 and beyond

This exhibition displays prominent German Jewish athletes. Whether they were distinguished national team members, world, European, and Olympic champions, or record holders – all of the athletes were celebrated heroes of their time. This display recognizes their incredible accomplishments and contributions to modern sports in Germany, and documents the persecution that they suffered under the Nazi regime. Some of them were practicing Jews, while others had no self-concept of being Jewish, but learned of their origins when the Nazis began persecuting Jews in 1933. Nazi authorities even exploited a few of the Jewish athletes in order to prevent the threatened boycott of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. One thing is certain; the Nazi dictatorship disrupted the lives and career paths of all the athletes. They were ostracized, disenfranchised, persecuted, forced to leave their homes, or murdered. 

The biographies of soccer pioneer Walther Bensemann, ten-time German athletics champion Lilli Henoch, national soccer player Julius Hirsch, Israeli and later German national basketball coach Ralph Klein, Olympic fencing champion Helene Mayer, world chess champion Emanuel Lasker, boxing champion Erich Seelig, German tennis champion Nelly Neppach, German javelin throwing champion Martha Jacob, track and field athlete Gretel Bergmann, Olympic gymnastics champions Alfred and Gustav Felix Flatow, European weightlifting and wrestling champions Julius and Hermann Baruch, ice hockey player Rudi Ball and German national soccer player Gottfried Fuchs. With the story of swimmer Sarah Poewe, the exhibition offers some perspective on present day sports in Germany. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, she became the first Jewish athlete to win an Olympic medal for Germany since the end of World War II.

 

Die Ausstellung ist aus Anlass der 2015 erstmals in Deutschland ausgetragenen European Maccabi Games in Berlin entwickelt und präsentiert worden. Idee und Konzept stammen von Norbert Niclauss (BKM) und Olliver Tietz (DFB-Kulturstiftung). Die Autoren und Kuratoren sind: Dr. Berno Bahro, Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Teichler (beide Potsdam), Prof. Dr. Lorenz Peiffer (Hannover), Dr. Henry Wahlig (Dortmund). Seitdem konnte die Ausstellung in zahlreichen deutschen Städten gezeigt werden.