Unsportsmanlike Conduct

Except for the occasional swastika or pro-Palestine jot of graffiti inelegantly scrawled on the side of a bridge or a yellow Deutsche Post mailbox, I’ve generally felt that Germans were damned apologetic for, you know, things.

Then, I started talking to teachers who work with students from area schools. Some of those teachers happen to be gay, and others of them happen to be Israeli (while still others, egad, happen to be neither). No matter their creed or orientation, they all agree that around the kiddies they’ve got to be all, “ixnay on the aygay” or “ietquay about the ewishjay.” The necessity to keep clandestine about their personal lives is born from the grisly stories they’ve been told about confrontations and threatening letters that have come from teenagers and parents alike. And it’s not unusual for them to hear homophobic or anti-semitic remarks from the mouths of the students themselves. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a situation like that, but I don’t suppose it feels very nice.

Of course, we all know that these kinds of obtuse attitudes aren’t confined to Germany. I heard homophobic comments most every day that I lived in New York, and one of my landlords there was capable of slipping not-so-subtle comments about “the Jews” into pretty much every conversation he and I had. And that’s not to mention blacks, Latinos, Asians and the Irish—if there was a way to crack an off-color joke, he would find it.

And, at the risk of beating this point to death, halfway across the American continent, a friend of mine who worked a polling booth at the Democratic primary in Oklahoma reports that she heard an elderly woman exclaim that she would never vote for a black man. A few hours later, a nicely dressed man decried “the nigger” (his words; definitely not mine) while some of the people lined up behind him chuckled. That was just two months ago, 2008. Golly, whether or not you believe in his politics, you’ve got to agree that it ain’t easy being Barack. Especially since he doesn’t have the luxury to tell his colleagues, the press or anyone else to “ipepay ownday about me being africanway americanway, ‘kay guys?!” Were I in Obama’s shoes, I would have crapped my BVDs about a year ago.

Same goes if I was a gay, Jewish teacher living in Berlin. Or maybe even just a full-blooded Jew living here. Then again, I might be more angry than scared. I nearly spit up my matzoh this morning when I read that the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German Historical Museum) held the inaugural ceremony for a German Sports Hall of Fame that includes among its first 40 inductees 5 former members of the Nazi party. And the douche bags who picked the list, like Deutsche Sporthilfe’s Hans-Joachim Elz, are justifying their choices with quality lines like “Sport is no better than society.” Slam dunk, Herr Elz! I suppose you chose not to honor athletes like Erich Seelig, 1933’s German Middle- and Light heavy- weight boxing champion, because he was a Jew and Jews at that time didn’t fit in with society. Or, if you really wanted to feed a scandal, why not pick Helene Mayer, who won a gold medal for fencing at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics and a silver at the 1936 Berlin Olympics? After all, she fit into society by saluting Hitler and shaking his hand even though she’d had her German citizenship revoked at one point because she was a…wait for it, wait for it…Jew!

Naturally, Herr Elz is correct when he says that sport is no better than society, but ultimately shouldn’t the athletes we honor be better than the average Joes and Nazis among us? Hall of Fame inductions are subjective, and they’re meant to honor athletes for their above-average contributions to a sport, a community, and, in some cases, like with Jackie Robinson, a people. The tacit rule has always been that because Hall of Famers are chosen based on emotional choices, it’s OK to call an asshole an asshole (Pete Rose), and the last time I checked my asshole guide, Nazis were right at the top.

I am sure that aside from a handful of ignoramuses, which apparently includes the people who came up with the inaugural German Sports Hall of Fame inductees, most Germans feel the same as I do. I mean, it totally flummoxes me that off-the-field sportsmanship wasn’t one of the determining factors considered when the five Nazi inductees earned their place in the new Hall of Fame. Spiegel points out, in the only interesting English-language article I found on this subject, that commentators have speculated that there is only one East German on the list because that country had an itsy-bitsy problem with doping in the 70s and 80s. It leaves the impression that dopers are worse than Nazis. But then along comes Sportshilfe’s Herr Elz again to deny that claim saying, ach Quatsch, “We wanted to focus mainly on posthumous mentions initially, and all the big East German athletes are still alive.” So, maybe once they start keeling over, the juice freaks will earn their spots alongside the National Socialists after all.

Well, if they do, my vote goes to champion shot-putter Heidi Krieger (pictured above). I just hope they don’t wait for the old ball tosser to expire before bestowing the honor. If Kreiger is eventually inducted, I’ll be all atwitter in anticipation to find out if the Hall of Fame will list the name as Heidi or Andreas, the name Heidi took in 1997 after she had a sex reassignment surgery. “I didn’t know any more who I was,” Krieger testified in a 2000 trial against two of the dopes responsible for all of the East German doping. “The pills accelerated any transsexual tendencies I may already have had. I wasn’t able to identify with my body anymore and that led me to undergo a sex change.” Damn, son, it took some king-sized balls to make a public admission like that, so I hereby induct you, Andreas Krieger, into the Fish Husband’s Hall of Fame. It’s a small, motley society, to be sure, but at least you won’t have to share it with any Nazis.

In any event, I hope that the great majority of Germans are embarrassed by the situation, and I’m chuffed that the German press has derided the decisions made by Sporthilfe by dubbing the fiasco the Hall of Shame. Still, I wonder how my teacher friends will explain the Hall of Fame if their students ever ask about it.

“Yes, Josef and Josefa, he was a Nazi,” they’ll probably say, “but he was also a helluva athlete!” Or, maybe not.

I, for one, won’t be attending the Deutsches Historisches Museum anytime soon because I figure that since I couldn’t boycott the 1936 Olympics, I can boycott this debacle by association. It’s a damned pity, too. I used to like that place.