Helene Mayer

Helene Mayer medal table
Helene Mayer (right) at the 1936 award ceremony
fencing
Germany / United States
Olympic games
	1928 Amsterdam	foil
	1936 Berlin	foil
International championships
gold	1929 Naples	foil
gold	1931 Vienna	foil
World championships
gold	1937 Paris	foil
silver	1937 Paris	Foil team
German championships
gold	1925	foil
gold	1926	foil
gold	1927	foil
gold	1928	foil
gold	1929	foil
gold	1930	foil
American championships
gold	1934	foil
gold	1935	foil
gold	1937	foil
gold	1938	foil
gold	1939	foil
gold	1941	foil
gold	1942	foil
gold	1946	foil

Helene Falkner von Sonnenburg , née Mayer (born December 20, 1910 in Offenbach am Main , † October 15, 1953 in Heidelberg ), was a German-American fencer . She became a six-time German individual champion , world champion and Olympic champion and is considered one of the most important fencers of all time.

Life

The doctor's daughter learned fencing from Arturo Gazzera in Offenbach am Main , in the Offenbach fencing club . Mayer won the German foil fencing championship in 1925 and had six national championship titles by 1930. In 1928 blonde Hee, as she was nicknamed, won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam and won the European Championships in Naples in 1929 and in Vienna in 1931 . From 1929 she studied international law in Frankfurt am Main , and from 1930 to 1931 at the Sorbonne in Paris . She later received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service for Scripps College, California, and achieved fifth place at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles , although she had previously had little training. After the National Socialists came to power , the tall, blond and blue-eyed Mayer was withdrawn from the scholarship for “racial” reasons (according to Nazi jargon she was “ half-Jewish ” because her father was Jewish), and the Offenbach fencing club was urged to leave the club have to leave.

At the urging of the American public and the intervention of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), she started for Germany at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and won the silver medal in foil fencing. This decision brought criticism to Mayer, who was already living in the USA at the time . Thomas Mann and others had appealed to Mayer, who had been living overseas for years at that time, not to enter the service of the Nazi regime. Victor Klemperer noted in his diary on August 13, 1936: "I don't know where the greater shamelessness lies, in your appearance as Germans of the Third Reich or in the fact that your services are used for the Third Reich."

At the Reich Press Conference on her return to Germany, it was decreed that only newspapers in Hamburg (where she arrived) and Offenbach were allowed to report on her return, because because of her status as a half-Jewish woman, they did not want to promote her start in the Reich (as opposed to abroad). However, Mayer emphasized that it was an honor for her to fight for Germany. Mayer won the silver medal and showed the Hitler salute at the award ceremony in the Olympic Stadium . At a reception in the Reich Chancellery, Hitler is said to have called her “the best and fairest athlete in the world”. When the director Leni Riefenstahl traveled through the USA in 1938 to advertise her film Olympia , Mayer was there.

In 1937 Mayer celebrated victory at the first world fencing championship in Paris . Immediately thereafter, she moved to the United States and was granted American citizenship in 1940 . In the years 1934-1935, 1937-1939, 1941-1942, and 1946 she was eight times US champion in foil. 1947 was her only participation without a win when she was defeated by Helena Mroczkowska Dow . In 1933 she won the "outdoor" championship. During this time she was also a lecturer in German, French and Italian at Mills College in Oakland, California. There she also gave fencing lessons while preparing for her diploma from the University of California at Berkeley . She then taught political science at City College of San Francisco . In 1952 she returned to Germany. In Munich she married the flight engineer Erwin Falkner von Sonnenburg and moved with him to Heidelberg .

On October 15, 1953, Helene Mayer died of breast cancer . At her grave, Karl Ritter von Halt , President of the National Olympic Committee of Germany, said: “We thank you, dear, good Hee, for what you have done for German sport.” She was buried in the Munich forest cemetery.

Honors

Special stamp from 1968

• The German Federal Post issued on the occasion of the Summer Olympics in 1968 in Mexico City as part of a special series, a 30 + 15 Pfennig - special stamp with a portrait Mayers.
• The Helene-Mayer-Ring in the Olympic Village in Munich was named in her honor on the occasion of the Olympic Games in 1972 .
• In Offenbach, a side street between Bahndamm and Isenburgring, where Helene Mayer's club, the Fencing Club Offenbach, had its home for a long time, was named after her.
• Member of the US Fencing Hall of Fame.

literature

• Arthur Lane remembers Helene Mayer 1936–1953. Oral history transcript / 1992, OCLC 214941770
• Jutta Braun: Helene Mayer. A Jewish sportswoman in Germany , in: Theresia Bauer, Elisabeth Kraus, Christiane Kuller and Winfried Süß (eds.): Faces of Contemporary History. German résumés in the 20th century , R. Oldenbourg Verlag Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-4865-8991-7 , pp. 85-102.
• Arnd Krüger : The Olympic Games 1936 and world opinion. Its importance in foreign policy, with particular reference to the USA. (Sports science work, Vol. 7) Bartels & Wernitz Berlin 1972, ISBN 978-3-8703-9925-2 .
• Arnd Krüger, Swantje Scharenberg: Times for Heroes - Times for Celebrities in Sport , Lit Verlag , Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-6431-2498-2 , p. 14 f. ( limited preview )
• Milly Mogulof: Foiled, Hitler's Jewish olympian. The Helene Mayer story . RDR Books, Oakland (California) 2002. ISBN 978-1-5714-3092-2 .
• Janet Woolum: Outstanding Women Athletes. Who They are and how They Influenced Sports in America , Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CN, USA, 1998, p. 193.
• Robert Jütte : The question of fate. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. January 9, 2018, p. 40.
• Conversation with Helene Mayer, the Olympic champion. In:  Neues Wiener Journal , March 28, 1929, p. 5 (online at ANNO ).

Movie

• What if? (The Helena Mayer Story) in the Internet Movie Database (English), documentary, USA, 2008, 47:18 min., Written and directed by Semyon Pinkhasov. (Excerpt)

Exhibitions

• 2010: 100 years of Helene Mayer , City Hall, Offenbach.

Web links

Commons : Helene Mayer  - Collection of Images

• Andreas Schirmer:  Mayer, Helene. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , p. 541 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Helene Mayer in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
• Helene Mayer in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Anjali Pujari: Helene Mayer (1910–1953): Fencing was her life - On the 100th birthday of the Jewish athlete ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
• History of the fencing world championships (women's foil) from sport-komplett.de
• History of the German fencing championships from sport-komplett.de
• Mayer, Helene , US Fencing Hall of Fame
• Mayer, Helene. Hessian biography. (As of February 14, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Mayer, Helene in the Frankfurt personal dictionary

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} cf. Kluge, Volker: 100 Olympic Highlights: Snapshots Athens 1896 - Atlanta 1996 . Berlin: Sportverl., 1996, ISBN 3-328-00678-8 .
2. ^ History of the fencing club Offenbach. Fechtclub Offenbach von 1863 eV, accessed on October 16, 2013 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Waldemar Krug: "... and I will stay forever". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 18, 2010, accessed on February 3, 2015 . 
4. ↑ Victor Klemperer: I want to give testimony to the last. Diaries 1933-1945. 10th, revised edition. Structure, Berlin 1998, Volume 2 ( Diaries 1935–1936 ), pp. 122–123.
5. ^ Arnd Krüger : The Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda and the Nazi Olympics of 1936. In: RK Barney, KB Wamsley u. a. (Ed.): Global and Cultural Critique: Problematizing the Olympic Games (4th International Symposium for Olympic Research). London, Ont .: University of Western Ontario, 1998, pp. 33-48 ( PDF ).
6. ^ Olympia 1936 - The boycott boycott. SPIEGEL ONLINE, March 17, 2008, accessed February 3, 2015 . 
7. ↑ Angelika Ohliger: With elegant foil. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . November 1, 2010, accessed March 14, 2016 . 
8. ↑ Anjala Pujari: Helene Mayer ( 1910-1953 ): Fencing was her life. (PDF; 9.5 MB) In: Landesarchiv Hessen. October 2010, pp. 41–42 , accessed on August 5, 2016 . 
9. ^ Lothar R. Braun: Urged to emigrate. In: Offenbach-Post . October 31, 2010, accessed March 14, 2016 .