Gottfried von Cramm was the first superstar of German tennis. He rebelled against the Nazi regime and his lifestyle caused discord.
Tennis in Germany has been associated with Boris Becker and Steffi Graf since the boom of the 80s and 90s. But long before Bumm-Bumm-Becker and the “Countess” drew the nation into the felt ball craze, another nobleman caused a stir on and off the court.
Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von Cramm, the “Tennis Baron”, was one of the most popular German sportsmen of the 1930s. He celebrated great successes on the court, but refused to bow to the Nazi regime and was openly bisexual.
While Germany showed its ugly face under Adolf Hitler, von Cramm embodied the image of a different Germany.
One of the most beautiful spectacles
In 1937, American sports writer John R. Tunis said of Cramm: “To watch this athlete, tall, elegant, robust and unflappable on the court, is to enjoy one of the most beautiful spectacles one can have in the galaxy of sport.”
Cramm combined athletic prowess with elegance, a dazzling appearance and success. But his lifestyle was not suited to the times. And that was Cramm’s undoing, who only started playing tennis at the age of eleven. Even his sporting successes were of no use to von Cramm, who was born near Hildesheim on July 7, 1909 and later lived in Berlin.
He reached the Wimbledon finals three times (1935/1936/1937), won the French Open twice (1934/1936), and in 1937 he won the Grand Slam tournaments in Paris and the US Open in the doubles. He represented Germany in the Davis Cup 101 times.
Gestapo arrested von Cramm
The Nazis were critical of von Cramm. On the one hand, his successes were easy to sell, but on the other hand, the well-connected cosmopolitan who did not support German Nazi propaganda was a thorn in their side.
When von Cramm arrived back home in 1938 after a long tournament trip, the Gestapo rang the doorbell of the von Cramm family, who were just sitting in the living room of their Brüggen castle after dinner. The tennis star was arrested. A homosexual affair with a Jew led to his arrest and a one-year prison sentence.
This was revised after seven months and suspended on probation. Von Cramm’s mother had asked Hermann Göring, a highly decorated Nazi Party politician and a member of the same Berlin tennis club as von Cramm, for clemency.
Previous conviction hinders career
Nevertheless, von Cramm remained convicted, which prevented him from participating in many international tournaments. And it got even worse for von Cramm: he was sent to the Eastern Front. He suffered frostbite and returned with home leave. He was later released from the armed forces.
Von Cramm rebelled against the Nazi regime in the last years of the war. After the war, he used his international popularity to become the first German athlete to receive permission from the occupying forces to leave the country. He was voted Sportsman of the Year in 1947 and 1948, and he ensured that the German Tennis Association, which he co-founded in 1948, was accepted into the International Tennis Federation two years later.
But von Cramm was not only successful on the court; as a businessman, he imported Egyptian cotton and met his second wife. After his marriage to Baroness Elisabeth, with whom he had been involved from 1930 to 1937, he married Barbara Hutton in 1955 and retired from active tennis. Hutton was no stranger to the limelight: as the heiress of Woolworth, she had social standing. But the relationship did not last long.
Posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame
The life of von Cramm came to a tragic end: He died on November 9, 1976 in a car accident in Egypt during a business trip. He was posthumously inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1977 as the first German.
In this respect, too, von Cramm had an advantage over Becker and Graf, who were not inducted into the Hall of Fame until 2003 and 2004 respectively.
