Jüdische Fußballvereine im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland - Book

Contents

Immediately after the National Socialists came to power, German football clubs began expelling their Jewish members in the spring of 1933. Jews were now forced to organise themselves into their own Jewish sports groups. In the coming years, these clubs built up an impressive sports system with separate competitions and championships in the shadow of terror and persecution. Lorenz Peiffer and Henry Wahlig have researched the history of the almost 200 Jewish football clubs that existed in the German Reich up until the pogroms of 9 November 1938. In detailed portraits, they succeed in painting a vivid picture of this lost football culture.

‘Much is known today about the fates of footballers such as Julius Hirsch or Gottfried Fuchs, who were called up to the national team before 1933. If the authors now analyse the numerous unknown football clubs and thus create a basis for further local research, they also rescue these sportsmen and sportswomen from the ‘damnatio memoriae’, the condemnation of memory that fell to them after their expulsion or murder following the Nazi regime. That is the great socio-historical merit of this pioneering work.’ - Deutschlandfunk

‘An absolutely essential book. ... A chapter of cultural history that the historians have rescued from oblivion by meticulously studying the sources - and which, on both a small and large scale, can hardly be equalled.