Jean Borotra

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Jean Borotra, 1931

Jean Borotra (born August 13, 1898 in Biarritz , † July 17, 1994 in Arbonne ) was a French tennis player and politician .

One of the "tennis musketeers"

The doctorate graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique (1920) was one of the "four musketeers" who in the late 1920s and early 1930s dominated the men's tennis years. Borotra preferred the attack game, moved to the net as soon as possible and was considered almost impassable there. He was famous for his volleyball from the jump - hence his nickname “the jumping Basque ” - and his extraordinary endurance.

In Grand Slam tournaments (in Wimbledon , Paris , Australia and Forest Hills ) he won four singles, nine doubles and five mixed titles. In the singles he could only not win the US Open . He was also part of the French Davis Cup winning team six times in a row .

Together with his teammates he was inducted into the tennis hall of fame in 1976 . As early as 1931, the Düsseldorf Rochus Club had made him an honorary member.

His greatest sporting successes

Commissioner of the Vichy regime

After the German invasion and the occupation of large parts of France in World War II , Borotra, who had been highly decorated in both world wars, became Commissioner (comparable to a ministerial office) for education and sport in the Vichy regime, which was collaborating with Nazi Germany . In this role he fought professionalism in sport through numerous edicts. When President Pétain dismissed Prime Minister François Darlan in April 1942 under pressure from the Germans, Borotra also had to give up his office (his closest colleague, Colonel Joseph Pascot, was succeeded ). During his attempt to flee to North Africa, the Gestapo arrested him in November 1942 and took him first to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and then to a privileged internment camp at Itter Castle in Tyrol , which was affiliated with the Dachau concentration camp . On May 5, 1945, those imprisoned there were liberated by troops of the Wehrmacht and the American army in action against the Waffen-SS at the Battle of Itter Castle . When the camp was liberated, Borotra had shown great courage and skill. The exact reason for his imprisonment cannot be determined; possibly there was a connection with Borotra's previous membership in the Parti social français , a right-wing party that opposed the Vichy regime because of its anti-Semitism . It may also have been due to his military attitude that prompted him to develop the sport in Vichy France as a paramilitary possibility of arming France. The Nazi censorship had also delayed the publication of the Charte des Sport , which he had initiated, by four months.

After the Second World War

Collaboration proceedings brought against him by the French government were apparently closed in 1945. Jean Borotra never publicly regretted his work in the Vichy regime; rather, he was for a long time President of the Society for the Defense of the Memory of Marshal Pétain . That is why he was considered an “undesirable person” at the tennis tournament in Wimbledon for a few years . The French tennis association Fédération Française de Tennis , however, made him its honorary president. In the 1960s he acted as a sports policy advisor to several Gaullist governments. In addition, Borotra was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1977 and Vice-President of the UNESCO Sports Council in 1982 . More recently, its political role has come back into focus during the occupation of France, in connection with the issue of the "cleansing of Jews from French sport" at the time.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ http://www.rochusclub.de/i/club/chronik.php ( Memento from March 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ cf. e.g. David Goldblatt: The ball is round. A global history of football. Viking / Penguin, London 2006 ISBN 0-670-91480-0 , p. 327, Pierre Delauney / Jacques de Ryswick / Jean Cornu: 100 ans de football en France. Atlas, Paris 1982, 1983² ISBN 2-7312-0108-8 , pp. 166-170, and the French Wikipedia article
  3. ^ Arnd Krüger : Strength through joy. The culture of consent under fascism, Nazism and Francoism, in: James Riordan & Arnd Krüger (Eds.): The International Politics of Sport in the 20th Century. New York: Routledge 1999, 67-89.
  4. ↑ Jean-Louis Gay-Lescot: Le mouvement sportif et l'édication physique scolaire en régime autoritaire: L'Etat Français de Vichy (1940-1944). Sport Histoire 2: 23-54 (1988).
  5. ^ David Thompson: A Biographical Dictionary of War Crimes Proceedings, Collaboration Trials and Similar Proceedings Involving France in World War II ( Memento February 20, 2010 on WebCite ) on Axis Biographical Research
  6. ^ Jean Borotra (1898-1994) - Biography. In: 2.ac-lille.fr. Archived from the original on July 25, 2013 ; Retrieved on April 4, 2017 (French).
  7. ^ Lutz Krusche: The Swimmer from Auschwitz. Alfred Nakache was a star until he fell victim to the anti-Semitism of the Vichy regime. In: Berliner Zeitung . June 6, 2001, accessed June 18, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Borotra, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French tennis player and politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Biarritz , France
DATE OF DEATH 17th July 1994
Place of death Arbonne , France