Hirsch 1

Alyssa Hirsch

Dr. Lupovitch

HON 4250

26 November 2019

Why Did Helene Mayer Compete for Nazi Germany in the 1936 Olympic Games?

Helene Mayer was without a doubt one of the most complex and controversial athletes in

Olympic history because of her decision to compete for Nazi Germany in the 1936 Olympic

games as a Jew. The circumstances of her athletic career were profoundly tied to her struggle

with her Jewish identity, and its international implications. This essay will analyze a newspaper

article written by Georg Bernhard, and then answer the question of why Helene Mayer chose to

compete for Nazi Germany in the 1936 Games by analyzing her identity, treatment and self-

perception, and refuting Bernhard’s claims he put in his article.

Georg Bernhard wrote his Helene Mayer article in the Pariser Tageblatter, which was a

French Newspaper written in German. This was the 687th issue of the Pariser Tageblatter and

was published October 30th 1935. According to the front of the newspaper, Bernhard was the

Chefredakteur, which translates to the head editor. Bernhard was “born into an acculturated

German-Jewish trading family in Berlin.” (Encyclopedia Judaica). Prior to writing for the

Pariser Tageblatter, he “went into the banking business from 1892 to 1898, then turned to

professional journalism.” (Encyclopedia Judaica). Then in “February 1933, he managed to flee

via east Prussia and Denmark to Paris, where he founded the influential emigrant newspaper

Pariser Tageblatter.” (Encyclopedia Judaica). Bernhard’s experiences as a Jewish expat

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propelled him to speak out against Mayer, whose decision to compete for Nazi Germany he saw

as a betrayal to the Jewish people.

Among the reasons Bernhard provided for Mayer’s state of mind regarding her decision

lied within his knowledge of her background through a Marxist viewpoint. Bernhard held

Marxist views, because he refers to the German Middle class as "verächtlichen" or despicable,

and lambastes Mayer for her apathy regarding "der Verfolgung und Marterung von Marxisten" or

the torture and persecution of Marxists. (Bernhard 1) By criticizing Mayer for her socio-

economic status as the groundwork for her decision, Bernhard asserted that she was a product of

her circumstances.

Bernhard was vehemently against Mayer's decision to compete for Germany, and her

decision to do so came from a place of ignorance. He failed to substantiate his claims with any

concrete evidence, such as testimony from Mayer or from anyone either the American Olympic

Committee or the International Committee. He also failed to provide evidence for her privilege

and ignorance. Though his assertations were not unfounded, Bernhard failed to contextualize his

claims and his conclusions about her lacked insight into Mayer’s unique situation or the family

and committee members who experienced her decision alongside her. Bernhard then stated "Sie

habe noch nahe Verwandte in Deutschland und sie riskiere bei den im Dritten Reich üblichen

Methoden ihre Familienangehoren ins Konzentrationlager oder gar in noch schlimmeres Unglück

zu bringen." (Bernhard 1) Here he says that Mayer had relatives in Germany and if she

competed, she risked putting them in a concentration camp. While her decision to compete could

very well impact the safety of her family, it would make more sense if the Nazis were to put her

family in a concentration camp if she did not compete for them.

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Bernhard then described his own views on Mayer’s participation in the games and her

relationship with the German government. He proclaimed, "he does not doubt for a moment that

Helene Mayer has been informed by the many Nazi agents that are in the United States.”

(Bernhard 1). Bernhard assumes that Nazi agents hiding in the United States corresponded with

Mayer, when she had been corresponding with von Tschammer, who was the Nazi sports

minister, because she was trying to negotiate for her German citizenship back.

Fortunately, a more personalized perspective offers insight into why Mayer chose to

fence for Nazi Germany in the 1936 Olympic games. Mayer competed for Germany because she

was an assimilated Jew who had been treated well by Weimar Germany, and still believed she

had some influence. In short, Mayer’s privilege was the driving force behind her decision to

compete for Germany in the 1936 Olympic Games. Before delving into the meat of this paper, it

is important to define some things. An assimilated Jew for the sake of this paper is someone who

was born Jewish and does not identify themselves as a Jew religiously or culturally. An

acculturated Jew is someone who was born Jewish and culturally and religiously identifies as a

Jew but is very integrated into the society pertaining to their current location. The politics of this

difference in identity had a major effect on their respective views of Mayer’s decision.

Firstly, it is important to note that Bernhard never considered how Mayer might identify

herself and assigned the label on her of “Judenbourgeosie” or Jewish elite. (Bernhard 1) He

thought that because she had Jewish heritage and she could compete for Nazi Germany, that she

was part of the Jewish elite. What Bernhard failed to consider is that Mayer never identified

herself as Jewish, and the only connection she had to Judaism was because of her father.

There are a few components to why Mayer was assimilated and did not view herself as

Jewish. These components are that she grew up in a secular household and that she was criticized
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by Jewish newspapers, rather than simply being a privileged German Jew as Bernhard claimed.

While Mayer was incredibly privileged, it was for reasons other than her status of being middle-

class as Bernhard argued. The two largest parts of Mayer’s identity were that she was German

and a fencer. "any accusations of being a lesser German seemed foolish, meaningless and

irrelevant." (Mogulof 37). She was also the child of an intermarried couple, with a Jewish father

and a Christian mother. Helene’s father, Dr. Mayer was very active in Offenbach’s Jewish

circles. Despite her father’s involvement in the Jewish community "in October 1921...her father

sent a terse typewritten note to the principal, Dr. Bojunga, saying 'I ask you to excuse my

daughter, Helene Mayer, from participation in Israelitischen religious instruction.'" (Mogulof

41). Even though her father prevented her from participating in Jewish studies, she still had some

contact with “Jewish organizations; she took part in a sports meeting organized by a Jewish

sports club and gave a fencing demonstration in a Jewish retirement home.” (Mogulof 42). The

little contact she had with her Jewish heritage was centered around sports or fencing. This was a

clear indication that she valued her identity as a fencer more than her identity as a Jew.

Bernhard was not the only member of the Jewish press that criticized Mayer for her

decision. In fact, in her early years of fencing for Germany, particularly after her victory in the

1928 games, several Jewish newspapers ostracized her purely because she looked Aryan and did

not embrace her Jewish heritage. A Jewish newspaper wrote a “sluggish and trite paean to

Helene” and was “replete with crude, easily recognizable stereotypes of Aryan womanhood.”

(Mogulof 47-48). Some of these stereotypes referred to her “German skull” among the typical

descriptors of blonde hair and blue eyes. Another common reason Mayer was under so much

criticism, was because “in the eyes of the Jewish community, Helene Mayer was a perfect

example of nonsensical racial ideology.” (Mogulof 48). The Jewish press used Mayer as means
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to prove to those who upheld racial ideology that this paradigm was nonsense. These newspapers

saw Mayer as a prop with which they believed they could dispel antisemitism by proving that

one of the greatest athletes in the Weimar Republic was Jewish. With these messages coming

from the Jewish press it made sense that Mayer would be turned off to the Jewish community.

Even if she never read Jewish newspapers, her father would have made some decisions based on

what was published about his daughter. In contrast, German journalists “were lavish in their

praise” stating that “the whole world loves her!” (Mogulof 2). Naturally, Mayer would be more

inclined to align herself with her German identity over her Jewish identity based solely on press

reception alone.

Regarding Mayer’s privilege, Bernhard claimed that Mayer was “einen Schulfall der

Seelenverfassung jener Judebourgeosie” (Bernhard 1). Here, he says that Mayer is a case study

or textbook case of the soul or moral condition of the Jewish elite. He managed to get one thing

correct, in that she was part of an elite group, just not the Jewish elite. As she had been distanced

from the Jewish community, her attachment to her German identity grew stronger. The Weimar

Republic had been good to Mayer and her family and treated her like royalty after her gold

medal victory in the 1928 Olympic games. She even received the nickname, the Golden “He”

referring to her gold medal victory. At the time, Mayer was only eighteen and starting twelfth

grade. After the games "when the Golden "He" returned from Amsterdam, there was a note on

the school bulletin board: ‘Our Unterprimarin [12th grade student] Helene Mayer has won the

first prize in fencing at the Olympic games in Amsterdam. Heil He!" (Mogulof 42). Another

instance of her royal treatment included "an enormous number of congratulatory letters."

(Mogulof 43). Not only that, Mayer also had contact with President von Hindenberg. In fact, "the

president had written to Dr. Bojunga requesting that Helene be granted an additional leave of
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absence so that she might make an exhibition tour of Germany." (Mogulof 44). Furthermore, she

had “private tea with President von Hindenberg, a medal awarding her the highest honors of the

German state, and an unprecedented torch-lit parade in her hometown of Offenbach” (Mogulof

3). Mayer was not just privileged for a Jew in Germany, but for anyone living in Germany. Being

placed on a pedestal during her formative years no doubt had an impact on the decisions she

made in the future.

Royal treatment aside, "there was no sense of doom for Offenbach Jews. During her

childhood, Helene was a happy student, the champion in foil fencing, fresh, blooming, full of

life, a wholesome portrait of German girlhood." (Mogulof 37). Mayer was too busy with fencing

and school to concern herself with matters of antisemitism, especially when it had little to no

effect on her. To summarize, there was no reason for Mayer to worry about the Jewish

community or pay mind to her Jewish identity, because neither directly benefitted her. She

identified more with being German because Germany had done a lot of good for her in her

formative years.

Mayer’s self-identification and treatment during her formative years played a massive

role in how she viewed herself in relation to the government. She still believed that she had

influence over the government because of how she had perceived her own influence over the

government in the past. This stubborn belief in her own value as a German ran contrary to her

treatment at the hands of a government who viewed her as a Jew. Even though Mayer identified

as German and not Jewish, the Nazi regime took away her citizenship and used it as a method of

manipulating Mayer into fencing for them. Bernhard touched on this when he says that “sieht sie

jetzt gar das Telegramm des Dr. Lewald als die Wiedergutmachung eines an ihr begangenen

Unrechts an, das sie nie ganz hat begreifen können.” (Bernhard 1). This meant that Mayer saw
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the telegram she got from Dr. Lewald, the invitation to compete for Germany as compensation

for a past wrong that was committed against her, but she did not make note of it. This spoke to

Mayer’s ignorance of her position with the Nazi regime. She believed that she was being invited

to compete because the government realized they took her citizenship which was not good

because she gave so much to Germany in the way of a positive international image during the

Weimar years.

This perceived value was the result of her view of Dr. Lewald’s telegram and

assumptions based on previous contact with the government, such as getting special permissions

and privileges from President von Hindenburg. However, having tea with the President does not

equate to the ability to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. It is possible that she believed her position as

a fencer and the importance of the Olympic games would grant her leverage. On the contrary,

when the American Hebrew questioned Mayer, they asked her if she knew “Nazi papers

repeatedly and tendentiously reported” her suicide. (Mogulof 112). It was abundantly clear that

Nazi Germany had no respect for her, outside what she could accomplish for them in the short

term. In fact, she was not even “invited to participate in the German Olympic tryouts.” (Mogulof

117). As this humiliating process continued along with the loss of her German citizenship, “on

November 5, 1935, she demanded full German citizenship rights as a condition for her

participation in the 1936 Games.” (Mogulof 120). She was almost successful with this

proposition, until she decided that being on the German Olympic team, a more immediate goal

was more important than getting Reich citizenship. (Mogulof 123). In conclusion, any perceived

leverage to negotiate with the Nazis was a testament to Mayer’s naivety.

The claims that Bernhard presented regarding Mayer should be considered but

supplemented with more credible research. If one was to gather information on what various
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news outlets thought of Mayer and how they wrote about her, this source provides lots of

information on that. However, if one was to actually try to answer the question of why Helene

Mayer competed in the 1936 Olympic games, one must supplement it with another source, such

as Moly Mogulof’s Foiled!: Hitler’s Jewish Olympian. Where Bernhard lacked concrete

evidence in his claims, Mogulof substantiated with eight periodicals, ten archives, twenty-five

books, ten newspapers, two encyclopedias, and primary sources gleaned from seven different

museums.

What was enormously prevalent is that Mayer's decision was made because she was a

product of her circumstances. When she had agency over her actions, such as when she

demanded citizenship in exchange for her participation in the games, it was done out of

frustration. On all fronts, whether it was from the German government or from Jewish

commentators like Bernhard, people attempted to use Mayer as a political pawn, entangling her

story with a narrative of power and persecution. She was very predictable not only as a product

of her circumstances, but also as someone who had very clear motives. She was not interested in

the politics of the Jewish community and if anything viewed her Jewish heritage as a burden.

Helene Mayer wanted to fence. It was all she wanted to do.

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Works Cited

"Bernhard, Georg ." Encyclopaedia Judaica . . Encyclopedia.com. 24 Nov. 2019

<https://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Bernhard, Georg. “Helene Mayer.” Pariser Tageblatter, 30 Oct. 1935.

Mogulof, Milly. Foiled, Hitler's Jewish Olympian: the Helene Mayer Story. RDR Books, 2002.