Heinz Alex Natan

Heinz Alex Natan , b. Heinz Alexander Nathan , (born February 1, 1906 in Berlin , † January 14, 1971 in London ) was a German journalist, writer and athlete.

Live and act

Heinz Alex Natan was born in Berlin in 1906 as the son of a medium-sized family. After attending secondary school, he studied law , history and political science at the universities of Berlin , Heidelberg , Munich and Leipzig . He wrote his dissertation in 1930 on South West Africa as Mandate C of the League of Nations .

In addition to his studies, Natan found time for a successful sporting career: in 1928 he took part in the Olympic Games as a track and field athlete and in 1929 he was the captain of the German track and field team in a competition with Switzerland. With the 4 x 100 meter relay of SC Charlottenburg , he was able to break the world record at that time. In 1927, 1929 and 1930 he was German champion with the Charlottenburg squadron, previously he had already succeeded in 1926 with Phönix Karlsruhe . In 1931 he moved to the Jewish sports club Bar Kochba Berlin. During the period of National Socialism, Natan, who was considered a Jew by the standards of the regime, was deleted from the record lists. He first played rugby at SCC, headed the rugby department of JTSC Bar Kochba-Hakoah from 1931 and was also head of the office of the Brandenburg Rugby Football Association, based in Berlin-Schöneberg.

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, Natan first emigrated to Switzerland and in the same year to England, where he changed his surname to Natan .

From 1935 to 1937 Natan worked as Rockefeller Assistant for International Relations at the University of London . After the outbreak of the Second World War , Natan was arrested as an " enemy alien " and interned in Canada from 1940 . After his release from internment, Natan took a position as Senior History Master at King's School in Worcester in 1943 .

Later Natan worked as an employee in the press and radio in Germany, England, Switzerland and Italy and became a freelance writer. He was also a co-founder of the Anglo-German Association and a member of the German Society for Foreign Policy .

Fonts

• New Germany , 1955.
• Passionate about sport , Thomas-Verlag, Zurich 1956.
• Soccer. Past and present, rules and terms , with Richard Kirn , Ullstein-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1958.
• Sport and Society. A Symposium , Bowes & Bowes Publishers, London 1958.
• German Men of Letters. Twelve Literary Essays , Oswald Wolf, London 1961.
• Silver Renaissance. Essays in Eigteenth-Centry English History , Macmillan, 1962.
• Prima Donna , Basilius Presse, Basel / Stuttgart 1962.
• Richard Strauss. The operas , Basilius Presse, Basel / Stuttgart 1963.
• Primo Uomo. Great opera singers , Basilius Presse, Basel / Stuttgart 1963.
• Stadium 60 , with Richard Kirn, Basilius Presse, Basel / Stuttgart 1964.
• Britain Today , 1965.
• Eminences gray. Secret advisers in the shadow of power , Walter Verlag, Olten and Freiburg im Breisgau 1967.
• Sport critical , Hallwag Verlag, Bern and Stuttgart 1972.

literature

• Klaus Amrhein: Biographical manual on the history of German athletics 1898–2005 . 2 volumes. Darmstadt 2005 published on German Athletics Promotion and Project Society.
• Kay Schiller: "The fastest Jew in Germany". Sport, modernity and (physical) politics in the eventful life of Alex Natans (1906–1971) . In: Stadion, vol. 43, 2019, issue 2, pp. 185–218, DOI: 10.5771 / 0172-4029-2019-2-185.
• Natan, Alex , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 277

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz Alex Natan in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data from Andreas Klimt: Kürschner's German Literature Calender 2000/2001 , 2001, p. 1334.
2. ^ Heinz Alexander Nathan (alias Alex Natan) - Stadtlexikon. Retrieved January 23, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Glenn Bl. Infield: Leni Riefenstahl. The Fallen Film Goddess , 1976.