Background
Hans von Tschammer und Osten was born in Dresden on 25 October 1887.
Hans von Tschammer und Osten was born in Dresden on 25 October 1887.
He entered the NSDAP in 1929 and in January 1931 became an SA Colonel. In March 1932 he was promoted to SA-Gruppenführer and leader of the SA-Group Centre. In March 1933 von Tschammer und Osten was elected a member of the Reichstag for the electoral district of Magdeburg. On 19 July 1933 he was appointed Reich Sport Leader and in January 1934 head of the Sport Section of the Kraft durch Freude, the National Socialist recreational organization which was designed to improve the morale of German workers and stimulate their productivity.
As Reich Sport Leader, von Tschammer und Osten implemented the Nazi policy of boosting German prestige abroad and maintaining public enthusiasm for the régime at home through the promotion of sports.
From 1933 onwards all sports were ‘co-ordinated’ and great attention was given to physical training, active participation in sports and endurance tests, at the expense of academic education. Sporting prowess was made a criterion for entrance to schools, for school-leaving certificates and even for certain jobs. Nazi sports policy also emphasized the goal of demonstrating ‘Aryan' racial superiority in international competition.
Under von Tschammer und Osten and his successors, German Jewish athletes were, for example, systematically hindered by being denied adequate facilities and the opportunity to compete, and Jewish sport was first ghettoized and then totally eliminated by the pressure of the police State and its propaganda policies. As head of the Reich Sport Office, von Tschammer und Osten was responsible for the institutionalized system of apartheid which developed, though it was temporarily and hypocritically modified to enable Nazi Germany to stage the Olympic Games in 1936 in Berlin.
He died on 25 March 1943.