11
There was no athlete in Germany who was more emblematic of the sport of boxing and more celebrated than Max Schmeling. From 1939, when he knocked out Adolf Heuser in the first round, to 1948, when he lost his final bout to Richard Vogt, he tried to escape the degradation of being a Nazi pawn and of having fought as a paratrooper for a government that he held in contempt. That government even coerced him into being an emissary to the pope, for Hitler and Goebbels wanted the pope to bless their war efforts and say that he was praying for a German victory. Schmeling’s meeting with the pope did not produce the results that Goebbels wanted to trumpet to the world. Here’s what happened.
Schmeling was brought to the Papal Palace and ushered past the Swiss Guards and into the pope’s private chambers, where after a brief waiting period, he was received by the pope. Pope Pius XII entered the room and heartily greeted Schmeling, whom he had admired from afar. He thought that Schmeling was a marvelous athlete and had watched films of his fights. The pope, according to Schmeling’s autobiography, expressed his sadness about the immense destruction of Europe and the death and wounding of people throughout the world during the war. He said that he would pray for peace. Schmeling thanked the pope for his time and departed.1
Goebbels was furious at the outcome and would not let newspapers in Germany report the pope’s comments. His fury raged more intensely when he learned that various European newspapers had quoted the pope. Goebbels vehemently blamed Schmeling for the unforeseen and unfortunate results.
Schmeling was secretly pleased that the pope had not advocated for a German victory. It was Schmeling’s modus operandi to passive-aggressively disobey the demands of Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels while never venturing to tell them that he thought Nazism was an obscenity that imposed a barbaric darkness over Germany and the conquered countries. He certainly never told them that he had hidden two Jewish teenagers in his apartment during Kristallnacht, but he spoke clearly and with certainty when he told Hitler he would not fire his Jewish manager, Joe Jacobs. Hitler had demanded Jacobs be fired after the manager embarrassed the Nazis. As we saw in chapter 1, this occurred following one of Schmeling’s knockout victories in Germany. Jacobs had rushed into the ring to congratulate Schmeling. As the spectators stood and honored Schmeling with the stiff-armed Nazi salute amid chants of Sieg Heil, Jacobs—unsure of exactly what to do—took his ever-present cigar from his mouth, held it between his index and middle finger, and raised his arm straight over his head. To onlookers and in newspaper photos, Jacobs looked as if he were giving the finger to the Nazis. Hitler was furious. Jacobs must go. No, said Schmeling, who demonstrated extraordinary courage and loyalty. It’s amazing that he was not penalized for his disobedience. Hitler uncharacteristically dropped the subject of Jacobs and dismissed Schmeling from his presence.
On another occasion, prior to America entering the war, Schmeling told an American reporter that he hoped Germany and America would not go to war against one another. He said it would be a tragedy, especially since he regarded America as his second home. For that breach of Nazi etiquette, Schmeling was nearly court-martialed. Goebbels had him tried before a military tribunal as a traitor. However, since Germany and America were not yet warring enemies, Schmeling had not committed treason and so he was acquitted, much to Goebbels’s disgust. Goebbels then made sure that Schmeling’s name and image would not be printed in any German newspaper. He would not be the subject of any newsreels. He was a nonperson, so much so that when he was discharged from the army in 1943, no notice appeared in any German publication.
Back in 1939, Schmeling had incurred the wrath of Goebbels through no fault of his own. Schmeling was signed to fight Adolf Heuser (aka “the Bulldog of the Rhine” and “the Bonn Tornado”) in a bout for the EBU European Heavyweight title and the German BDB Heavyweight title. Schmeling knocked out his opponent, who lay sprawled unconscious in the ring for an unusually long time and required artificial respiration to be brought back to consciousness. Though the fight had taken place in what was then known as Adolf-Hitler-Kampfbahn (Adolf Hitler Stadium), a local newspaper reported that Schmeling had knocked out Adolf Hitler in Adolf Heuser Stadium. The misprint caused Goebbels, who as minister of propaganda controlled all the newspapers in Germany, to fly into a rage and accuse Schmeling of attempting to undermine Hitler’s dignity. Nothing came of the accusation. It was another reason for Goebbels to dislike Schmeling.
Goebbels also disliked Heuser, for the fighter had suffered an ignominious loss to the Jewish boxer Slapsy Maxie Rosenbloom in 1933. It was not a good year for German boxers fighting Jews, for that same year Schmeling lost to Max Baer in a fight that Schmeling called a disaster. The referee had to stop the fight out of concern that Baer would kill Schmeling. Film of the fight was banned in Germany and a radio broadcast of the fight was censored once it was apparent that Schmeling could not withstand Baer’s brutal attack.
That Schmeling was not sent off to a concentration camp for all his failures to please Hitler and Goebbels speaks to his enormous popularity as the premier German athlete of the 1930s. Win or lose, he was beloved not only by boxing fans but by all those who prized his exceptional athletic abilities.
Heuser, unlike Schmeling, was eager to get into Goebbels’s good graces. He had more than a dozen fights during the war, emerging as both a heavyweight and a light heavyweight champion. He had a record of 88 wins, 21 losses, and 17 draws. Though the Nazis cheered his victories, their appreciation did not save Heuser from a life of clinical depression and humiliating poverty. After his house was bombed into rubble during the war, he was so traumatized that he never fought a title fight again. His fights lacked the zest and confrontational determination of his earlier battles. He continued to fight until February 1949, when he lost to Helmut Janke. He was forty-one years old and spent the next forty years in a state of unremitting depression. He was in and out of psychiatric hospitals. When outside, he volunteered in a restaurant in Bonn. But once his condition overwhelmed his ability to work, he was again hospitalized. He died in 1988, age eighty-one. Though he was an afterthought to the Nazis, a road in Bonn, the Adolf-Heuser-Weg, was named after him in 1997.
Max Schmeling’s postwar life was rosy compared to that of Heuser. The war over, Schmeling decided he would return to boxing. He had no other skills other than leaping out of a plane as a paratrooper. From boxing he could still earn a living. People knew him as the boxer who had beaten Joe Louis and who had been badly beaten by the partly Jewish boxer Max Baer. He could still draw a crowd. So he arranged for a series of fights, training as vigorously as he ever had. In his first postwar fight, he knocked out Werner Vollmer in the 7th round of a 10-round bout. Less than three months later, on December 7, 1947, he beat Hans Joachim Draegestein on points in a 10-round bout. He fought Draegestein again on October 2, 1948, and this time scored a TKO in the 9th round of a 10-round bout. Draegestein did not have a great record: 23 bouts of which he won 7, lost 8, and had 7 draws. His career ended in 1950, with each of his last 12 fights ending in a loss.
Between his two bouts with Draegestein, Schmeling lost a decision to Walter Neusel on May 23, 1948. Neusel, known as “the Blonde Tiger,” was a formidable heavyweight who was ranked the sixth-best German boxer across all weight divisions. Yet years earlier, on August 26, 1934, he suffered a 9th-round TKO loss after a relentless pounding by Schmeling. The fight generated a great deal of publicity for the two men fought in front of an audience of more than 100,000 boxing fans. It was the largest audience at that time for a German boxing match. Though Neusel put up a valiant defense against Schmeling, he was not able to withstand the barrage of punches that Schmeling landed. Nearly six years later, on June 22, 1940, Neusel finally won what he had aimed for since the start of his pugilistic career, the German Heavyweight Championship, by beating the formidable Arno Kolblin. However, the sweet taste of victory turned bitter when he lost the title on November 3, 1940, in a bout with Heinz Lazek. Never giving up on his ambition for a championship, he regained it on June 6, 1942, by beating Adolf Heuser, and would go on to beat Schmeling on points after the war. The end of Schmeling’s boxing career was just around a few more ring corners. He had 5 postwar fights, winning 3 and losing 2, including a loss to Neusel.
By 1948, Schmeling was forty-three years old—long in the tooth for a professional boxer—but still in need of money so he agreed to participate in one more fight. It would be against Richard Vogt, who had won a silver medal as a light heavyweight in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Before twenty-thousand spectators, Schmeling and Vogt put on a fast-paced display of pugilistic skills that did not cease until the final bell sounded. When it was over, Schmeling had lost the decision. It was his seventieth fight, his last hurrah. He would need to find another means of earning a living.
He felt no shame in losing for Vogt had been a tough opponent, regarded as one of Germany’s premier pugilists. He had begun his career in 1938 and retired in 1952, having won 55 bouts, with 7 losses and 10 draws. He had won the German Light Heavyweight title in 1950. Schmeling understood that his own speed and stamina had diminished with age, that boxing was a young man’s game, and it was time for him to move on. He had compiled an impressive record of 56 wins, 10 losses, and 4 draws. He was regarded by sportswriters and fans as the best German boxer of the twentieth century. A modest man, he was quietly proud of his accomplishments as a boxer.
His boxing career over, Schmeling and his wife, Anny Ondra Ondrakova, a former Czech movie star, settled in Hamburg. The couple had been married since 1933 and were still treated as celebrities. Out shopping, dining, dancing, or just strolling down a boulevard, they were often photographed and asked for their autographs. Goebbels, who had killed himself, was no longer there to block newspapers from printing photos of the Schmelings.
By 1950, the future looked bright for Schmeling: he had secured a job with the Coca-Cola Company at the firm’s German offices. It was the beginning of a stellar career that would make him a wealthy man. Before long, he owned his own bottling plant and held a senior executive position with the company.
Having secured a level of comfort and security, Schmeling felt he could visit America without suffering accusations of having been a Nazi pawn. So in 1954 he decided to pay his respects to the memory of his former manager Joe Jacobs (who had died in 1939) and to former ring opponent Joe Louis.
I flew to New York. My first path took me to a Jewish Cemetery. The caretaker, a small bent over man wearing a black yarmulke, asked me whom I was looking for. And when I told him, he said, “So you come from Germany?” Then he showed me the way. It was a beautiful spring day. Trotting on ahead, the caretaker led me through a maze of headstones.
He stopped in front of a simple grave marked only by a flat stone plaque. Then he began to speak—“Joe,” he said bending way over as if he wanted the deceased to understand, “Joe, here is a friend of yours! Its Max Schmeling. He didn’t forget you. He came from Germany and wants to visit you. His first stop, Joe, was to visit you.”
As the little man spoke I stood unmoving, looking at the weathered stone. I imagined Joe, how he used to gesticulate excitedly from my corner of the ring, pulling animatedly on the ropes chattering away wildly at me in the locker room and always with the cigar in his mouth, which he really didn’t smoke, but rather chewed, literally eating the cigar from one end to the other.
The old man brought me out of my thoughts. “Friends always die too soon,” he said, “no matter how old they live to be. But Joe here, he died much too soon.”2
From Brooklyn, Schmeling traveled to Chicago to visit Joe Louis, with whom he had two highly publicized fights. Journalists had portrayed their encounters as battles between Nazi ideology and American democratic values.
During the war and into the postwar years as well, journalists had sought repeatedly to play us off against each other … trying to put hateful or insulting words in our mouths.
One day, without calling ahead, I found myself standing at Joe Louis’s door. A woman answered the door, seemed startled for a moment, and then said in surprise, “Oh, Mr. Schmeling. Please come in.”
She told me that Joe was unfortunately not at home but out playing golf, and that she would call him right away. But Joe was already on his way home. I had only waited a few minutes when the front door opened. I heard her speak to him and then he was standing before me. For a few moment he stood there as if he had grown roots. Then he dropped his golf bag and rushed over to me. “Max! How good to see you again!”
We sat there together for hours, until late in the evening, talking about the great fights and the old friends. And it was only then that I realized how much it had bothered me over the years that the hatreds of the times had managed to separate us. A short time later, Joe visited me in Hamburg.3
Schmeling, throughout the remainder of his life, provided financial help to Louis, and upon Louis’s death on April 12, 1981, he paid for his friend’s funeral. Schmeling’s wife died six years later on February 28, 1987. One year short of a century of life, Schmeling died on February 2, 2005. He was celebrated throughout his native land: newspapers, television, the internet were full of stories about his life, an honorable German who followed his conscience and not poisonous Nazi ideology.
While Schmeling remained friends with many Jews from the boxing world of the 1930s, no Jewish boxers played an important role in postwar Germany. They had either emigrated or they had been exterminated in the concentration camps.
Boxing is not as popular in Germany as it once was. There was a brief spurt of great popularity soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and many champions excited fans who regularly tuned in on television to watch the bouts. But soon the interest died down. Very few boxers had personalities that excited the public, and boxing’s popularity has always depended on the outsized personalities of its champions.
Though there has been a number of skillful boxers in postwar Germany, no one has exhibited the kind of charisma that Schmeling did. No one, that is, until Wladimir Klitschko (aka “Dr. Steelhammer”) dropped one opponent after another to the raucous cheers of rapt boxing fans. Though actually a Ukrainian, he is considered an honorary citizen of Hamburg, where he has lived for decades. According to German surveys, he is listed as one of the most recognizable athletes in Germany and one of the most marketable. He drew fans to his fights as if he were a rock star. From 2004 to 2015, the 6'5" pugilist carried the banner for what became known as the Klitschko era. He was aided by his brother Vitali, who was also a heavyweight champion and went on to become the mayor of Kyiv in the Ukraine. Both brothers earned PhDs in sports science.
Wladimir began his career in 1996 and accumulated an impressive record of 64 wins and only 5 losses. During his career he was celebrated for 24 consecutive wins, 10 by knockout. His total number of knockouts was 53. He had an overwhelming ring presence. As soon as he entered a ring, crowds roared their approval, cheering, whistling, stamping their feet, whooping and hollering. Of course, no fighter goes on winning bout after bout, and Wladamir’s career wound down after two major losses, one to Tyson Fury, the other to Anthony Joshua. For the fight with Joshua, more than ninety thousand fans filled Wembley Stadium in London, and 1 million fans paid to watch the fight on pay-per-view in England. In Germany alone, more than 10 million additional fans watched their hero. So popular was he in Germany that he signed to be a spokesman for Porsche and Deutsche Telecom, and those gigs only added to his immense celebrity. By the time he retired at age forty-one in 2017, Wladimir had earned the WBO, IBF, WBA and IBO belts and was listed as one of the top 100 sports earners by Forbes. He stated,
Twenty-seven years ago I started my journey in sport. It was the best choice of a profession I could have made. Because of this choice, I have traveled the world, learned new languages, created business, built intellectual properties, helped people in need. At some point in our lives, we need to, or just want to, switch our careers and get ourselves ready for the next chapter—obviously I am not an exception to this. I am expecting and hoping my next career, which I have already been planning and working on for some years, will be at least as successful as the previous one, if not more successful. I was and am still capable of doing all this because of the global appeal of sport and boxing, my own talent, and most importantly because of you, my loyal fans.4
By the time he retired, Wladimir had defeated twenty-three boxers for the world heavyweight championship; he had broken a record established years earlier by heavyweight champ Joe Louis. Even more impressive, Klitschko fought in twenty-nine world heavyweight title fights, more than any other boxer in history. With his PhD as a passport to teach, Wladimir became an adjunct professor at Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen. One of his fans was Schmeling, and the two boxers became good friends. One German commentator stated that it seemed as if Schmeling had passed on his charisma to Klitschko, a link spanning pre-war Germany and postwar Germany.
I have asked several authorities about the future of boxing in Germany. They hope that another popular world champion will emerge. In looking for an answer, I watched a touching documentary titled Comeback. It’s about a German boxer named Jurgen “the Rock” Hartenstein. He is an athlete of extraordinary discipline and devotion to the sport of boxing. He is determined to have a successful career but is too poor to train in a professional gym so he trains in a dark and dreary attic and in the park near his home. He is determined to make a comeback but no one in Germany will give him a match. Hartenstein regularly contacts promoters and asks if they could set up a match for him. After all, he was once the middleweight champion of Germany. But that was years ago. His record, unfortunately, is one of wins and losses. He is finally offered an opportunity to fight in Philadelphia. If he wins, it will be his comeback, his ticket to future well-paid matches. But his record does not portend a happy ending. From 2002 to 2010, he won 1 fight and lost 11 other fights. For his fight in Philadelphia, he trains with the determination of a man whose career hangs on a hinge that could open the door to success or slam it shut with a sudden knockout punch. Will he fight on as an underdog? Is his boxing career over? Does his career portend the future of German boxing? It’s impossible to predict. However, Germany itself has been a nation of defeats and comebacks. I assume that there is another aspiring pugi-list willing to go through the long slog to become champion, for every sport inspires young athletes to dream of being the best there is.
Though Schmeling and Klitschko were giants of the world of German and international boxing, there were exciting boxers of the 1930s who died unable to achieve possible greatness. There are no more heroic Jewish and Roma/Sinti boxers in Germany today. Harry Haft, Victor Perez, Salamo Arouch, Nathan Shapow, and Johann Trollmann are long gone, their careers destroyed by a vicious, despotic regime whose ideology sought to eliminate anyone regarded as inferior to an idealized Aryan.