Max Schmeling (1905â2005) was the first global star of German sport. He came to prominence in an age in which professional sport was a novelty in Germany and paved the way for iconic figures of later decades such as Steffi Graf, Boris Becker and Michael Schuhmacher. His career was extraordinary and in some ways contradictory. In a period characterized by social, political and cultural upheaval and by the German nationâs fatal and ultimately self-destructive commitment to fascism and a genocidal war, Schmeling emerged as one of the finest heavyweight boxers of the century, recognizable to millions on both sides of the Atlantic. A darling of liberal Weimar Berlin in the late 1920s, Schmelingâs move to New York in 1928 saw him achieve, in 1930, what no other European had to that pointâhe became the world heavyweight champion, the most iconic of titles in a globally popular sport. Under the Nazis, Schmeling became a propaganda figure like few others. His fights against Joe Louis , in 1936 and 1938, are remembered not only as electrifying sporting events but as examples par excellence of social, cultural and political investment in sport.
After 1945, as the Federal Republic of Germany underwent a process first of economic recovery and then of âcoming to termsâ with the past, Schmeling was able to re-establish himself as a successful entrepreneur. Despite his close association with Hitlerâs regime, he not only retained his celebrity status but also, with the passage of time and with changing political and cultural agendas, came to be admired as an emblematic figure, a so-called good German, and a national as well as a sporting hero. When he died, just months short of his one hundredth birthday, the nation mourned the loss of a man it chose to remember as a legend. This legend has its origins in the popular fascination with sport and its champions, but it had also been cultivated through conscious interventions both by Schmeling himself and, crucially, by generations of journalists, intellectuals, artists and ideologues.
When I first began to think about Max Schmeling in the context of the intellectual debates around sport and the sports movement in the Weimar Republic , I did not initially anticipate that a book-length study would be the eventual result. But it became rapidly clear that to understand Schmeling and his meaning, one also needed to reflect on complex, evolving questions of culture, ethics, memory and national identity. In the course of a long life, Schmeling was subject to an extraordinary level of public scrutiny, and the status he enjoyed decade after decade provokes important and difficult questions. If German history over the last century has been (as is often claimed) characterized by transitions, breaks and renewals, how was it possible for one individual to retain continuous popularity and prominence throughout that time? How did his image develop through periods of extreme political contrast, and what does the process reveal of the nation (or the national cultures) that he was so often said to reflect or for which he was held up as a role model? How significant is it that he was a boxer, and thus an exponent of a sport in which Germany had little or no tradition? And should the celebration and commemoration of Schmeling in Germany after 1945 be seen as the result of a willful failure of collective memory or a justifiable desire to find a redemptive connection to the past? These are the overarching questions that inform the chapters of this study, which aims to make a significant contribution to the existing body of work on Schmeling and on German sports history, but also to complement the growing number of interdisciplinary analyses of sport in the context of culture in the broadest sense. My argument will also, I hope, offer something to the reader with an interest in the problematic function of so-called heroes in society, or in the interaction between professional sport and broader political, ethical and so-called national questions.
The following sequence of five chapters re-examines the key stages in Schmelingâs story, from the 1920s to the decade following his death. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the Weimar Republic , reflecting on the sports movement and the critical discourses surrounding sport, Schmelingâs emergence as a star and symbol, and the importance of America in the shaping of Schmelingâs career and reputation. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the period of National Socialist rule. Chapter 4 examines the relationship between sport and ideology under Hitler and the claims made by the Nazis on boxing in particular and assesses the ways in which Schmeling adapted to political culture and propaganda expectations after 1933. Chapter 5 analyses the discourses of âheroismâ and the ânationalâ that shaped the two extraordinary fights with Joe Louis and, later, the representation of Schmelingâs wartime military service. Chapter 6 reconstructs the process through which Schmeling emerged, yet again, as a kind of role model after 1945 and pays particular attention to the mapping onto his biography of a moral framework that reflected Germansâ desire both for continuity and for VergangenheitsbewĂ€ltigung (coming to terms with the past).
Each chapter focuses on representation and the social, cultural and political contexts that have informed the development of an enduring public image. As such, although the reader should certainly learn a great deal about Schmelingâs life, this is not a biography. There are a number of published biographies in German, the most authoritative (and critical) of which is that published by Volker Kluge in 2004. 1 In English, three monographs focused on Schmelingâs fights with Joe Louis . 2 David Margolickâs work in particular is important and useful in its reconstruction of the circumstances surrounding the two occasions, but its scope is necessarily limited by a narrative strategy that depends on the presentation of parallel stories (Schmeling and Louis in the 1930s). Like the other recent works in English, it does not aim to reflect in depth on the manner of Schmelingâs representation throughout his life or how it has intersected, often problematically, with the critical discourses surrounding sport, nationhood, memory and morality. My aim is to do exactly this, by drawing comparatively on a wide range of primary sources and material, including journalism and essays, life writing, prose fiction, film, visual art and museums. In this respect, this book aligns itself with the body of comparative work on the cultural significance of sport by scholars including Allen Guttmann, BenoĂźt Melançon, Kasia Boddy and David Scott. 3
Schmeling has often been described as being more than a boxer, and the reasons for this will become clear. That said, sport, and its potential meanings, lie at the heart of this study. The degree of cultural investment in sport, in Germany as in many countries, makes it a particularly rich area for interdisciplinary study. There are few areas manifesting such intense popular interest, commercial exploitation and on occasion political resonance as modern professional and competitive sport. This was true of the pre-war period in which Schmeling was at his competitive peak, and it remains the case today. I approach sport as a social, psychological, technological and aesthetic phenomenon and as a cultural product that interacts with others, such as art, fashion and the media, and, like these, is encoded with complex messages and layers of meaning. It has often been observed that sport might in some respects be comparable to art in its social and psychological functions, indeed, that the playing of sports, like art, might embody some of the very things that make us human. In his recent Philosophy of Sport, Steven Connor teases out the peculiar philosophical implications of sport as a cultural institution that is essentially ânon-necessaryâ. He notes that Jean-Paul Sartre found existential value in the arbitrary nature of sport and its performance, comparing the actor (who is also a player) and the sportsman. 4 This comparison also suggests that sport may have a further value, namely in the act of spectatorshipâin particular, in the experience of spectatorship en masse. Michael Mandelbaum, in his recent study of the meaning of sport in American life, also draws structural parallels between sport and drama and between sport and the epic, in which the protagonist âencounters a series of challenges that it must meet to achieve its ultimate goalâ. 5 Sport may be arbitrary in the sense that it serves no immediate practical purpose, but Mandelbaum emphasizes the self-contained âcoherenceâ of the sporting contest, which, in the context of the often incoherent modern world, helps to explain why sports matter to so many: âWhile they do not furnish a coherent picture of the world as a whole, they do at least offer a coherent picture of something.â 6 In this context Roland Barthesâ suggestion, in the commentary text he wrote to accompany the visuals in the short documentary film Le Sport et les hommes (dir. Hubert Aquin, 1961), that sport fulfils the same social function that theatre once did makes absolute sense: âSport is a great modern institution cloaked in the ancestral form of the spectacle.â 7
For Barthes, the appeal of sport lies in its ability to elicit a direct, visceral response, to break down the barrier between spectator and player: âEverything that is happening to the player is also happening to the spectator.â 8 Joyce Carol Oates , in her philosophical meditation on boxing , refers to the intimate and painful âconnection between the performer and observerâ. 9 This immersive form of identification is undoubtedly part of the reason why certain star performers have, from the earliest days of organized sport, been elevated to a particular form of hero status. Amongst these are a few who achieve something even higher, the status of legend or even myth. The manner in which these figures are represented, and the sort of responses these representations in turn elicit, is revealing in a way similar to the iconography of saints, reflecting patterns of cultural, social, racial and national identification. The achievements of such so-called legendary personalities are invested with what Oates refers to as mythopoetic status: âto be a great champion, like Muhammad Ali) , one must transcend the perimeters of sport itself to become a model (in...