Luz Long

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Award ceremony in the long jump: middle Owens , left Tajima , right Long with his right hand raised

Carl Ludwig "Luz" Hermann Long (born April 27, 1913 in Leipzig , † July 14, 1943 in Biscari , Sicily ) was a German athlete who was successful in the long jump in the 1930s . He was multiple German champion and European record holder and won the silver medal in the long jump at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 .

Life

Family background

Luz Long was the son of the owner of the Leipzig Schwanen Pharmacy Carl Hermann Long (1875-1945) and his wife Johanna Long (1885-1976), née Hesse, daughter of the dentist Friedrich Louis Hesse , granddaughter of the surgeon Carl Thiersch and great-granddaughter of the chemist Justus von Liebig . Luz Long was the great-nephew of Adolf von Harnack's wife Amalie, b. Thiersch, and also the great-nephew of Hans Delbrück's wife Carolina, b. Thiersch. Luz Long's great-grandfather Carl August Sebastian Long is the first name bearer of the Long line, a doctor in Friedland (Lower Silesia) and the illegitimate child of a princess of Sagan . Luz Long had four siblings: Elfriede Lewicki geb. Long (1910–1986), Charlotte Long (1911–2010), Sebastian Long (1914–1966) and Heinrich Long (1920–1940).

Childhood, school and study time

The family initially lived in the Schwanen pharmacy house at Reitzenhainer Straße 23, today's Prager Straße. In 1922 the family moved into the family's extended summer house at Russenstrasse 24 in Probstheida as their permanent residence.

Long attended the Bauer private school from 1919 to 1923. In 1923 he transferred to Nikolai-Gymnasium , from where he moved to Friedrich-List-Realgymnasium in 1932. In April 1934 he passed his Abitur there. In the autumn of the same year , he enrolled at the law faculty of the University of Leipzig . There Long passed his legal traineeship exam in January 1938 .

Long had been a member of the Nazi student union since 1937 . In 1938 he joined the Sturmabteilung (SA). In this paramilitary organization, he held the rank of SA Rottenführer from July 1937 .

He spent his legal traineeship in 1938/1939 at the district court in Zwenkau . In June 1939, Long passed his state examination . In the following month he received his doctorate with the topic “The direction and supervision of sport by the state. A development history “for the Doctor of Laws (Dr. jur.).

Grave of the Long family with a plaque for Luz Long, Südfriedhof Leipzig

Profession and military service

Long moved to Hamburg in 1940 , where he worked at the labor court there. On April 1, 1940, he joined the NSDAP under membership number 8.051.702 . In March 1941 he put the Notexamen for Assessor from. A month later he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and transferred to Wismar . In May 1941 he was sworn in and in July 1941 he was transferred to Berlin, where he worked as a sports teacher for the Wehrmacht.

death

In April 1943, Long received rapid training with the anti-aircraft artillery in Deep , Pomerania . The following month he was in an anti-aircraft unit in the war in southern Italy. Long obviously had doubts about the point of his commitment. Jesse Owens later quotes from a letter he received from Long during wartime: “Dear friend Jesse! ... I'm just afraid of dying for the wrong cause. I hope my wife and son will survive. I ask you, as my only friend outside of Germany, that you will visit them one day to tell them why I had to do this and how wonderful the time we lived together was. Luz ". When Sicily was captured as part of the Allied Operation Husky , Long, who had the rank of corporal , received a shot in the thigh during the fighting for the Aeroporto di Biscari-Santo Pietro on July 10, 1943 and had to be left behind during the German retreat. According to the Owens biographer Jeremy Schaap, he died as a result of his injuries on July 14, 1943 in British captivity. His comrade Robert Stadler (1924-2016) describes in an ARD broadcast on August 9, 2015 that he and other Wehrmacht soldiers on the run from the Americans had found the wounded Long bleeding heavily on the thigh and was unable to tie the wound sufficiently so that he - after Stadler's continued escape - most likely bled to death. He was first buried by the Americans in Gela and in 1961 reburied in the German war cemetery Motta Sant'Anastasia in Sicily.

Athletic career

Luz Long's autograph, which he gave after winning the Olympic medal

Long won the silver medal behind Jesse Owens on August 4, 1936 at the Olympic Games in the long jump . It is certain that both athletes became friends during the competition. After the award ceremony, both of them walked hand in hand towards the audience. Long, who was inferior to Owens' 8.06 m with 7.87 m, got the attention of the press. Further statements by Owens that Long gave him tips for the last jump after two failed attempts in qualifying in the long jump are highly controversial. While Long also wrote of two failed attempts at Owens shortly after the Games, the specialist magazine Der Leichtathlet of August 5, 1936, said that both athletes had already achieved the required distance on the second attempt. In 1965, Owens admitted in an interview with Olympic historian Tom Ecker about his statements about Long: "These are stories that people want to hear". Long remained after the 1936 Games for almost two years in all long jump competitions in which he competed, unbeaten and during this time also set a new European record of 7.90 m, which was to last until 1956. Incidentally, Jesse Owens was stripped of amateur status by his association immediately after the games in Berlin, so Owens and Long never competed against each other again. The multiple German champion and European record holder Luz Long started for the Leipziger SC throughout his career , where he was trained by Georg Richter. When he competed, he weighed 72 kg and was 1.84 m tall.

Personal

Long's future wife Gisela, née Behrens, he met in Hamburg. They were betrothed on March 22, 1940. They were married on January 4, 1941. Their marriage resulted in two children. The first son Kai-Heinrich Long, who in 2015 published a biography ( ISBN 978-3-942468-26-8 ) about his father including private notes and photos, was born on November 13, 1941 and the second, Wolfgang Long , on May 30, 1943. Wolfgang Long died in Leipzig on March 6, 1944, still in his first year of life.

Appreciations

In Leipzig, the Luz-Long-Weg in the immediate vicinity of the Sports Science Faculty of the University of Leipzig and the Canoe Club and in Munich the Luz-Long-Ufer in Munich's Olympic Park was named after him.

statistics

Successes in detail:

  • European record: August 1, 1937 (7.90 m)

Quotes

“It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw long again. He was killed in World War II. "

“It took a lot of courage to make friends with me in front of Hitler's eyes. You could melt down all the medals and trophies I have, but they couldn't make the 24-carat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment a bit more golden. Hitler must have gone mad when he saw us hugging. The sad thing about the story is that I never saw Long again. He was killed during the Second World War. "

- Jesse Owens : about Luz Long

Publications

  • State direction and supervision of sport. Leipzig 1939. (Legal dissertation)

documentation

  • NDR-Doku 2019 - Luz Long, a gesture for eternity , online

literature

  • Kai-Heinrich Long: Luz Long - an athlete's career in the Third Reich. His life in documents and pictures. Arete Verlag, Hildesheim 2015, ISBN 978-3-942468-26-8 .

Web links

Commons : Luz Long  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ DNB : The direction and supervision of sport by the state. A development history.
  2. ↑ Jeremy Schaap: Triumph - The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston / New York 2015. p. 235.
  3. ↑ When Jesse Owens ran away from the racial madness - Luz Long dies at the front. Handelsblatt, August 3, 2011.
  4. ^ Sports club story - Luz Long, a hero in the Nazi era. ARD, August 9, 2015, 11:30 p.m. ( summary on ARD ; quote on said passage , Andrea Augello [Italian]).
  5. ↑ Volker Kluge: From Herbert Runge to Rudolf Harbig - 1913 was a good Olympic year. In: Journal of the Olympic and Sport Philatelic Club Berlin. No. 2/2003, p. 49.
  6. ↑ Andrea Augello: uccidi Gli Italiani. Ed. Mursia, pp. 174-176.
  7. ↑ Comune motta santa nastasia
  8. ↑ in: Der Spiegel No. 1/29. December 2014, page 105, Luz Long " Jesse's fairy tale "
  9. ↑ NPR : What Jesse Owens' 1936 Long-Jump Story A Myth? (English).
  10. ↑ Oskar Beck: Olympics 1936: "Hug a Negro never again!" In: welt.de . May 1, 2013, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Cf. the list of results from all of Luz Long's competitions in Kai-Heinrich Long: Luz Long - a career in sports in the Third Reich.
  12. ^ Arnd Krüger : The Olympic Games of 1936 and the world opinion. Bartels & Wernitz, Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-87039-925-2 .
  13. ↑ espn.go.com: Owens pierced a myth
personal data
SURNAME Long, Luz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Long, Lutz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German athlete
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH July 14, 1943
Place of death Biscari , Italy