Adolf Metzner

Adolf Metzner (* 25. April 1910 in Frankenthal (Palatinate) , † 5. March 1978 in Hamburg ) was a German track and field athlete and Olympic participants, who after his medical training as internist , cardiologist and sports doctor made a name. Posthumously he learned high honors due to him in his will decreed Foundation in favor of his hometown Frankenthal, whose Parkfriedhof he was also buried.

It was only decades after his death that it became known that he had concealed his activities during the Nazi era in his résumé and had successfully given the impression that he was a mere follower .

Family and education

Adolf Metzner was the son of the Frankenthal brewery owner Otto Daniel Metzner and his wife Hedwig Marie Elisabeth. At the private grammar school Weierhof in the North Palatinate municipality of Bolanden am Donnersberg , he passed the Abitur and then studied medicine in Frankfurt am Main . In 1935 he completed his studies with graduation and doctorate then the doctor of medicine . During internal training and further education, he specialized in cardiology and sports medicine.

Sports

During his studies and in his first professional years, Metzner was successful in athletics, especially in the 400-meter run , but also on the 100-meter course and in the two relays . His strengths were a quick start and outstanding acceleration. His weakness, the final sprint, was particularly evident over 400 m and resulted from his relatively high weight of 79 kg in relation to his height (1.80 m).

His main sporting successes were:

• 1931 German champion over 400 m
• 1932 German champion over 400 m, Olympic participant over 400 m
• 1934 German champion over 400 m, European champion over 400 m (47.9 s), European champion over 4 × 400 m (together with Helmut Hamann , Hans Scheele and Harry Voigt ; 3: 14.1 min)
• 1936 German champion over 4 × 100 m, Olympic participant over 400 m
• 1937 German champion over 4 × 100 m

job

From 1947 onwards, Metzner made a career in sports medicine research in Hamburg. There he and the three years younger Ernst Gadermann developed the basics of the first telemetric measurements of the EKG in athletes at the Institute for Physical Education at the university , which was founded in 1925 . In addition, from 1961 he helped to set up a sports editorial team for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit , in which he then worked for years. In 1971 he received a professorship at the Hamburg Institute for Sports Medicine , and in 1972 he retired.

Honors

According testamentary provision Metzner was 1982 in Frankenthal with an initial capital of 1 million DM what inflation corresponds adjusted in today's money 1 million euros, the Adolf Metzner Foundation launched. It has set itself the goal of promoting the city's cultural and social institutions. I.a. it awards the Adolf Metzner Music Prize , which serves to promote young talent in the field of music and has been awarded every two years since 1999.

The Adolf-Metzner-Park, created in 1985 between Foltzring and Schmiedgasse, was significantly redesigned between 1999 and 2004 and partially relocated to the west. The bivalve fountain with one of sculptor Fritz Fleer cast bronze sculpture representing Metzner as a relay runner, is back at a central location of the park.

politics

In 2009/2010, the Friends' Association for Jewish Remembrance in Frankenthal came across the previously unknown political activities of Metzner during the Nazi era and subsequently published the following findings:

At the age of 23, Metzner joined the SS on September 1, 1933 . On July 4, 1937, he applied for admission to the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and received membership number 4,929,068. Shortly after the beginning of the Second World War , Metzner was called up on October 7, 1939 as SS-Untersturmführer in the Waffen-SS and worked there in various units and institutions until the end of the war. On August 1, 1940, he was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer and on November 9, 1942 to SS-Hauptsturmführer , a rank that corresponded to that of a captain in the Wehrmacht.

During the denazification by the Allies after the Second World War, Metzner kept quiet about his activities in the SS and NSDAP. On March 7, 1949, he was classified as a “fellow traveler” by the court in Fritzlar (Hesse) and a “monetary atonement” of 50 marks was imposed on him. When Metzner applied for the position of a sports doctor at the University of Hamburg in 1953, he stated in his handwritten résumé of March 8, 1953 that he was from “7. October to the end of the war soldier or medical officer " , in his personal sheet he wrote accordingly " Wehrmacht from October 7, 1939 to the end of the war " .

Quotes

“ The splendor of fascism (in sporting terms only shines in northern Italy) ... where Germanic bloodstreams are still visible in the national body . "

- Adolf Metzner in 1933 as a commentator in a sports magazine

" The tree-long nigger in the seven- league boots, a tall , athletic guy with a tiny egg-shaped head that barely has enough brain space for a little tactical thinking ... "

- Adolf Metzner in 1936 during his journalistic coverage of the 800 m Olympic champion from Berlin, John Woodruff

Web links

• Adolf Metzner in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

References and comments

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Doctor, athlete, globetrotter and patron . In: Frankenthaler - the city magazine . July 2009.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Frankenthal in the Nazi era: SS man Adolf Metzner. Association for the Promotion of Jewish Remembrance in Frankenthal, accessed on August 14, 2014 . 
3. ↑ Stephan Pieroth: "You have to dig deeper" . In: Die Rheinpfalz , local edition Frankenthaler Zeitung . Ludwigshafen April 17th, 2010.
4. ^ ^{A b} Adolf Metzner 60. In: Die Zeit , No. 18. May 1, 1970, accessed on May 7, 2010 . 
5. ↑ This number is automatically determined each time a page is viewed , has been rounded to the nearest million euros and relates to last January.
6. ↑ Note: This refers to October 7, 1939.
7. ^ ^{A b} Stephan Pieroth: Controversial debate about Metzner . In: Die Rheinpfalz , local edition Frankenthaler Zeitung . Ludwigshafen May 7, 2010 (The newspaper cites research results from Gerhard Nestler, the city archivist of Frankenthal.).