Fritz Gazzera

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Fritz August Gazzera (born December 4, 1907 in Offenbach am Main , † January 5, 1996 in Bad Godesberg ) was a German fencer and fencing trainer. As an active fencer he took part in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, as a trainer he trained among others Friedrich Wessel . He is the son of the fencing master Arturo Gazzera and father of Sigrid Chatel , who competed for Canada in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico as a foil fencer. Like many other active fencers, he was a member of the SS during the National Socialist era .

Life

Fritz Gazzera was the son of the Italian fencing master Arturo Gazzera, who worked at the Offenbach fencing club since 1899 through the mediation of Jakob Erckrath de Bary and trained Helene Mayer , among others . Fritz also fought in his father's club. With the foil he was twice German runner-up ( 1927 and 1928 ), with the sword he also took part in German championships several times . In Cremona, Gazzera fought in an international match in the German team, which lost to Austria, Hungary and Italy. At the Olympic Games in 1928, Gazzera competed in foil singles as well as with the epee and foil team. While he finished eighth in the individual and was second-best German after Erwin Casmir , he was eliminated with the teams in the preliminary rounds.

Even before the Second World War , Gazzera worked as a trainer and trained among others Josef Uhlmann , Richard Wahl and Richard Liebscher , he also helped Helene Mayer prepare for the Olympic Games. In 1937 Gazzera became a member of the SS, in which numerous successful German fencers were active at the instigation of Reinhard Heydrich , himself an active saber fencer. In 1939 he switched to the SD and in 1943 to the Waffen SS . As a member of the Waffen SS, he was assigned to the Arolsen concentration camp , a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp , in 1944 . In 1945 he fought partisans in Yugoslavia and was captured there.

After the war, Gazzera became a coach at OFC Bonn in 1950 , and in 1952 he looked after the German participants in the Helsinki Olympic Games . In 1953 he founded his own fencing club, the Bonn University Fencing Club, but returned to the OFC in 1958. The OFC won numerous German championships with him as fencing master. His most successful student was Friedrich Wessel who was world champion twice. His daughter Sigrid Chatel , who has been living in Canada since the 1960s at the latest , competed for Canada in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico. Gazzera died in Bad Godesberg in 1996 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Schröder: Deutsche Fechtkunst, Georg Koenig Buchdruckerei and Verlag, Berlin 1938, pp. 49-66.
  2. ^ Max Schröder: Deutsche Fechtkunst , Georg Koenig Buchdruckerei and Verlag, Berlin 1938, pp. 138–156.
  3. ^ Fritz Gazzera in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original ).
  4. ↑ Volker Kluge and Donald Macgregor (transl.) (2011): A “New Woman” and her Involuntary Myth * - One hundred years ago the German fencer Helene Mayer was born , Journal of Olympic History 19, No. 3, p. 30 -38.
  5. ^ 1st decade from 1949 to 1958. OFC Bonn, archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; Retrieved June 5, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Gazzera, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gazzera, Fritz August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fencer and fencing master
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Offenbach am Main
DATE OF DEATH 5th January 1996
Place of death bad Godesberg