biography
The glamor and tragedy of tennis legend Gottfried von Cramm
Gottfried von Cramm in the final at the Berlin Whitsun tournament (1960). Photo: UPI / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Gottfried von Cramm was one of the most elegant tennis players of all time. But he was also bisexual and stood up for a Jewish companion. That was his undoing under the Nazis.
Long before Boris Becker and Steffi Graf there was already a German world star in tennis who has been wrongly forgotten today. Gottfried von Cramm (1909-1976) was probably the most glamorous tennis player Germany has ever had.
But the popular athlete was also a torn figure, a solitaire whose unadjusted character and lifestyle did not really fit into the Nazi or the Biedermeier Adenauer period. Cramm’s bisexuality had tragic consequences for him and resulted in an incurable break in his career. This can now be read in the biography by Jens Nordalm, which is well worth reading, «The beautiful German. The life of Gottfried von Cramm ».
Like his contemporaries, the author is fascinated by his dazzling protagonist with his life story that is almost cinematic. The north German aristocrat Cramm combined outstanding tennis art with noblesse, dazzling looks and a winning demeanor. Above all, he was considered the epitome of fair play. No wonder that he could hardly save himself from admirers and especially from admirers.
“One of the most beautiful spectacles”
Even the fans of his opponents paid their respects to the “tennis baron”, and that at a time when athletes from Nazi Germany were not exactly popular abroad. The American sports author John R. Tunis wrote with admiration in 1937: “To watch this athlete, tall, elegant, robust and unshakable on the pitch, is to enjoy one of the most beautiful spectacles that one can have in the galaxy of sport.”
The fact that Gottfried von Cramm represented Germany over a hundred times in the Davis Cup and achieved 82 wins in doubles and singles (albeit never at Wimbledon) undoubtedly secures him a place in sporting history. But his life story becomes particularly interesting because he got caught in the mill of politics.
Condemned by the Nazis
Although Cramm was the most popular German tennis player of his time, the Nazis sentenced him to prison in 1938 for a homoerotic relationship. As a criminal, Cramm was then excluded from many international tournaments and was even assigned to the Eastern Front. After the war he could no longer build on the old heyday.
Cramm’s fate was his relationship with Manasse Herbst, a young actor. That this was a Jew didn’t make things any better in the eyes of the Nazis. Cramm was already decried as a “friend of the Jews” because, among other things, he had vehemently advocated his friend, the Jewish tennis player Daniel Prenn. In 1933, Cramm had condemned Prenn’s exclusion from the German Davis Cup team to foreign reporters. Prenn was forced into exile by the exclusion.
The cosmopolitan Cramm with its jet set life and its many international contacts (among other things, he was friends with King Gustav of Sweden and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands) was hardly suitable as an “Aryan model athlete”. For years he had an open marriage with the equally glamorous Lisa von Cramm. She also entered into same-sex relationships. If you look at the many portraits of the two in the book, you’d put this attractive couple in the roaring roaring 20s rather than the 30s.
From star to merchant
In 1955, Cramm entered into a second marriage with his long-time girlfriend, the millionaire Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, but it soon broke up. The tennis star had long since turned into a leisurely cotton merchant, a development that saddened the author: “But bit by bit and year after year, an old German republican honesty that also hurts settles over this life.” Gottfried von Cramm died in a car accident in Egypt at the age of 67.
The book uses a lot of original material from the family archives and also evaluates the informative court records from 1938. And yet there remains a void. We only get a limited insight into Cramm’s inner workings. Above all, we would like to know: What did the process do to him that divided his life into two unequal halves? We can only guess.
– Jens Nordalm: The beautiful German. The life of Gottfried von Cramm, Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg, 286 pages, 24.00 euros, ISBN 978-3-498-00207-7.