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Thread ID: 16598 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2005-02-05
2005-02-05 03:14 | User Profile
Obituary: Max Schmeling
Former world heavyweight champion Max Schmeling Schmeling was held up as an example of Aryan supremacy Max Schmeling shocked the world by beating America's Joe Louis and then took part in a return contest that became the most racially and politically charged fight of all time.
In his long life, Schmeling experienced fortunes of dramatic contrast. Born in 1905 during the days of the Kaiser, he went hungry during the "Turniptop Winter" of World War I.
But he took up professional boxing in the 1920s and, by the end of the Weimar Republic, he had become world heavyweight champion.
By the time of his first fight with Louis at the Yankee Stadium in New York six years later, Schmeling was considered past his best and the Nazis tried to have the fight called off.
Max Schmeling, 1905-2005 Born: 28/9/1905 1930: Defeats Jack Sharkey to become world heavyweight champion 1932: Loses belt to Sharkey 1936: Knocks out Joe Louis in 12th round 1938: Loses to Louis in fight for world heavyweight championship
Louis was 22 and unbeaten, but complacent and out of condition. Even so, the world gasped when he was knocked out in the 12th round by Schmeling, who then carried Louis to his corner.
The Hindenburg airship carried Schmeling back to Germany, where Hitler invited him to lunch.
"I had to go," he said later.
Together, they watched a film of the fight and Hitler slapped his leg each time Schmeling scored a telling blow.
Schmeling held the title for two years and when he met Louis again in 1938, the American was world champion.
In a tidal wave of pre-fight publicity, both men were exploited by their governments to try to shape the patriotic consciences of their nations.
Joe Louis knocked Schmeling to the canvas three times Schmeling was outclassed in his second bout with Louis
However, the re-match, on 22 June, turned out to be one of the briefest of fights. Schmeling threw only one punch and was knocked down three times.
While he was taken to hospital with two of his vertebrae broken, Goebbels sent flowers and Hitler a message of sympathy to Schmeling's wife, the glamorous film actress, Anny Ondra, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock's first talkie, Blackmail.
But within a year or so, the regime had turned against Schmeling because he refused to act as a Nazi spokesman.
He revealed his relief at losing the fight, as it meant that he could no longer be touted as a symbol of Aryan physical supremacy.
In November 1938, less than six months after his defeat, Schmeling came to the aid of a Jewish friend who had to flee Germany in the wake of Kristallnacht.
He hid the friend's two sons in his Berlin apartment and later helped them to escape from the country.
Schmeling and Joe Louis Schmeling (right) was a reluctant Nazi icon
The episode only came to light in 1989, when one of the sons invited Schmeling to Las Vegas to thank him for saving his life.
After serving as a paratrooper during World War II, Schmeling attempted a boxing comeback. He eventually bowed out in 1948.
But, outside the ring, he prospered. While Joe Louis struggled with tax problems and drug dependency, Schmeling became a wealthy man by running the German operation of perhaps the most American of all companies, Coca-Cola.
In 1954, he sought out Louis in Chicago to explain that he had never borne him any malice. Their meeting led to a friendship that endured until Louis' death in poverty in 1981.
Long before the end of the Millennium, Schmeling had dispelled the myth that he was a symbol of Nazi evil, and established his claim to dignity.
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/front_page/1321910.stm[/url]
2005-02-05 03:24 | User Profile
He jumped into Crete. R.I.P.
2005-02-05 03:29 | User Profile
So he just died today? Interesting how a lot of great Thrd Reich era figures are still around.
According to accounts I'd heard during one of his fights (can't remember which), Goebbels, a notorious womanizer, went to Schmeling's apartment to watch it with his wife. Doubtless this didn't endear him to Max. Schemling came from working class Hamburg, which of course like East Berlin was not exactly a Nazi stronghold in the first place.
It was unfortunate for him that so much weight was put on him, because his first victory over the great Louis really was a great achievement.
R.I.P. Max.
2005-02-05 06:20 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Louis was 22 and unbeaten, but complacent and out of condition. [/QUOTE]
Excuses, excuses. I guess poor old Joe Louis was out of condition when the undefeated Rocky Marciano knocked out him also.
There were many European like Schmeling who risked their lives to protect Jews. I wonder if the Jews who collect all that reparation cash ever pay back the people and families of those who risked their lives to protect them.
2005-02-05 06:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Snouter]Excuses, excuses. I guess poor old Joe Louis was out of condition when the undefeated Rocky Marciano knocked out him also.
There were many European like Schmeling who risked their lives to protect Jews. I wonder if the Jews who collect all that reparation cash ever pay back the people and families of those who risked their lives to protect them.[/QUOTE] Maybe these people could launch their own suits against Israel :lol:
2005-02-05 11:37 | User Profile
Great boxer he was, and actually quite swarthy for a German.
Petr
2005-02-05 12:32 | User Profile
A good man. I heard he paid all of Louis' funeral costs as well. I can't imagine being under the kind of pressure Schmeling was under in the mid-30s. Somehow he didn't succumb to it; this reluctant hero discovered, in time, that living well is the best revenge. Good for Max Schmeling.
2005-02-06 01:54 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]A good man. I heard he paid all of Louis' funeral costs as well. I can't imagine being under the kind of pressure Schmeling was under in the mid-30s. Somehow he didn't succumb to it; this reluctant hero discovered, in time, that living well is the best revenge. Good for Max Schmeling.[/QUOTE]Max lived in Germany, a country where war was understood. At the age of 36 he jumped into Crete and was severely wounded. In the United States professional athletes competed in sports rather than fight. Not one man on the major league baseball roster at the end of the 1941 season died in World War II. So much for vaunted American masculinity.
From my book:[QUOTE]...What really offended Mr. Newfield was this gallantry was not even mentioned in the Hollywood film on Patton's life. "Liberators" showed Joe Louis knocking out Max Schmeling which to Mr. Newfield suggested that Hitler's theories of Aryan supremacy had also taken a pounding.(1) Sportswriter Paul Gallico, when writing before World War II broke out, remembered Max as perhaps the most sportsmanlike and decent prizefighter he had known.(2) When real war did start, Mr. Schmeling was a serving German paratrooper and was severely wounded when he jumped into Crete. Mr. Louis in the segregated American army was a non-combatant. Like so many Americans Mr. Newfield was only too eager to think sports were war. 1. New York Post, p2, Dec 1, 1992 2. Paul Gallico, Farewell to Sport, p279 (Knopf, 1941)[/QUOTE]
Jack Newfield was a New York Jew of the minor sort
2005-02-06 02:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr][B]Great boxer he was, and actually quite swarthy for a German.[/B] Petr[/QUOTE]Your field of expertise has long been confined to arguing how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Worldly events confuse you. You would learn far more from just reading and trying to ask intelligent questions.
2005-02-06 02:07 | User Profile
Is acting like a jerk a reflex for you?
2005-02-06 05:06 | User Profile
Schmeling, Louis, Marciano (and Johnson, Dempsey,...) couldn't survive one round with the top heavyweights today. Frankly I don't think Ali or Frazier could last a round with someone like Vitali Klitschko.
2005-02-06 14:04 | User Profile
Interesting idea, Jack. Could you elaborate?
Petr