Cramm, Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von.

Cramm, Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von, born 07-07-1909, in Söhlde Germany,  to third of the seven sons of Baron  Dr. jur. Adalbert Carl Adolf Thedel Burchard von Cramm (1874-1936), by his marriage to Countess Jutta, born von Steinberg (1888–1972), Cramm was born at the family estate,   Castle Nettlingen, Lower Saxony, Germany and grew up in Castle Brüggen which also belonged to his family. A younger brother, Wilhelm-Ernst Freiherr von Cramm (1917–1996), was a German officer who was highly decorated during World War II, and who after the war was leader of the German Party, a conservative German political party. Through the mutual ancestry from the Cramm family, he was third cousin of Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands.

 Wilhem-Ernst died on 29-05-1996 in Oelber Am Weissen Wege, Lower Saxony, he was 78 years old.

Gottfried von Cramm began playing tennis around the age of ten after his right hand had recovered from an accident. That accident, which resulted in him losing the top joint of his index finger on his right hand, was the result of a horse who took more than just the sugar cube offered to him by the young von Cramm.

For three straight years Cramm was the men’s singles runner-up at the Wimbledon Championships, losing in the final to England’s Fred Perry in 1935 and again in 1936. The following year he was runner-up to American Don Budge, both at Wimbledon and at the U.S. Open. In 1935, he was beaten in the French Open final by the English Fred Perry, but turned the tables the following year and defeated his rival, gaining his second French championship. For his successful tennis career, he was decorated by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Silver Laurel Leaf, Germany’s highest sports award.

 The baron forced to grin and bear it: greeting the Führer, 1933. The ascension of the Nazis put him in a difficult place. Thousands, including friends of his, were disappearing into concentration camps. But if he were to emigrate like Prenn, or refuse to play for an evil regime, his family (including his quarter-Jewish wife) might be endangered.

Despite his enormous popularity with the public, on 05-03-1938, von Cramm was arrested by the German government and tried on the charge of a homosexual relationship with Manasse Herbst, a young Galician Jewish actor and singer, who had appeared in the 1926 silent film Der Sohn des Hannibal. Manasse Herbst (01-11-1913 in Galicia, Austria-Hungary – 03-01-1997 in Hallandale, Florida) was a German-speaking silent movie actor, child-actor, theater actor and singer from Jewish descent. He participated in 416 sold-out performances of the operetta White Horse Inn between 1930 and 1932 in Berlin. During the first half of the 1930s, Herbst had a relationship with the German Baron Gottfried von Cramm, one of the more popular tennis players of the time. Because of this, von Cramm was sentenced in a Nazi propaganda trial that was recognized all over the world. Due to his Jewish background and the Nazi prohibition to perform his job, Herbst fled from Germany in 1936. Later, he became a U.S. citizen.

After being hospitalized for a nervous collapse after his arrest, on 14 March von Cramm was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment Cramm admitted the relationship, which had lasted from 1931 until 1934 and had begun shortly before he married his first wife. He was additionally charged with sending money to Herbst, who had moved to Palestine in 1936. According to a report on the trial in The New York Times of 15-05-1938, the judge stated that “Baron von Cramm had alleged that his wife, during their honeymoon, had become intimate with a French athlete. The court held that this experience had unsettled the young tennis star and had resulted in his seeking a perverse compensation for an unhappy married life.” Although Cramm had confessed to an affair with Herbst once he was arrested, he later changed his confession to one of “mutual masturbation”, and his lawyer was able to convince the judge that Cramm had been forced into sending money to Herbst because Herbst was a “sneaky Jew”.

Cramm’s international tennis friends were outraged at his treatment. Don Budge collected the signatures of high-profile athletes and sent a protest letter to Hitler. His friend King Gustaf V of Sweden also pressured the German government to have him released. Cramm was released on parole after six months, and in May 1939 returned to competitive tennis. Cramm competed at the Queen’s Club Championships in London, where he won the event by beating American Bobby Riggs 6–0, 6–1. Officials at Wimbledon reportedly refused to let him play in their tournament, using the excuse that he was a convicted criminal and therefore unfit; The New York Times, however, quoted Wimbledon sources as saying that Cramm would have been welcome to participate, had he submitted an entry. A further humiliation was Germany’s decision in 1940 to recall Cramm from an international tennis tournament in Rome before he had a chance to play. Bobby Riggs’s career was quickly interrupted by militairy service during WWII as an enlisted Navy specialist. Bobby died 25-10-1995 (aged 77) in Encinitas, California, U.S.

Cramm refused to become a party member of the NSDAP during the entire period of the National Socialist regime, although Hermann Göring, who was a member of the same tennis club, tried to persuade him several times. Because Cramm never mentioned Hitler during speeches on international trips, watched films critical of the regime, and privately spoke disparagingly of the National Socialists, he increasingly aroused the displeasure of the Nazis.

Von Cramm showed solidarity with the active resistance to Adolf Hitler in the last years of the war, using his travels as a tennis coach to Sweden to pass on confidential messages from the 20 July conspirators. After the failed assassination attempt, he expressed his desire to join another attempt. Since the resistance never reorganised after the 20 July plot, he never got the chance to turn his words into deeds.

In May 1940, some months after the outbreak of the Second World War, Cramm was conscripted into military service[15] as a member of the Hermann Göring Division.   under command of Major  Walther von Axthelm  Bobby saw action on the Eastern Front and was awarded the Iron Cross. Despite his noble background, Cramm was enlisted as a private soldier until being given a company to command. His company faced harsh conditions on the Eastern Front, and Cramm was flown out suffering from frostbite, with much of his company dead. Because of his previous conviction, he was dismissed from military service in 1942. Walther von Axtheim survived the war and died 06-01-1972 (aged 78) inTraunstein.

While the war robbed Cramm of some of his best years as a tennis player, he won the German national championship in 1948 and again in 1949, when he was 40 years old. He went on playing Davis Cup tennis until retiring after the 1953 season and still holds the record for the most wins by any German team member.

Following his retirement from active competition, Cramm served as an administrator in the German Tennis Federation. He was instrumental in reviving the Lawn Tennis Club Rot-Weiss in Berlin following World War II, and later served as its Chairman and President (1958-death). Von Cramm became successful in business as a cotton importer. In addition, he managed the landed estate he had inherited from his father in Wispenstein, in Lower Saxony.

Baroness Elisabeth Lisa von Dobenck (1912-1975), a daughter of Robert, Baron von Dobeneck (died in 1926) and his wife, former Maria Hagen (1889-1943), a granddaughter of the Jewish banker Louis Hagen. They married on 01-09-1930 and divorced in 1937. Lisa von Cramm later married the German ice-hockey star Gustav Jaenecke . Barbara Hutton an American socialite and an heires to the Woolworth five-and-dime fortune. The couple married in 1955 and divorced in 1959. Gottfried had married her in order to “help her throught substance abuse and depression but was unable to help her in the end”

Death and burial ground of Cramm, Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von.

While on a business trip, Cramm and his driver were killed in an automobile accident near Cairo, Egypt, in 1976, when the baron’s car collided with a truck. Two roads were named in his honor, the Gottfried-von-Cramm-Weg in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, where the Rot-Weiss Tennis Club is located, and a similarly named road in the small town of Merzig. Gottfried Cramm was buried at Burg Oelber Friedhof Baddeckenstedt, Landkreis Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, Germany.

Message(s), tips or interesting graves for the webmaster:    robhopmans@outlook.com