Background
Helene Mayer was born in Offenbach, near Frankfurt am Main, on 12 December 1910, the daughter of a Jewish physician and a Christian mother.
Helene Mayer was born in Offenbach, near Frankfurt am Main, on 12 December 1910, the daughter of a Jewish physician and a Christian mother.
At the age of only thirteen she won the German foil championship for the Offenbach Fencing Club and in 1928, while still at school, she took the Olympic gold medal in the individual foils for Germany at the Amsterdam Games. In the same year she also won the Italian national championship and by 1930 had been victorious six times in the German championships. World foil champion in 1929, 1931 and 1937, Helene Mayer left Germany in 1932 to study international law in California.
She was still studying in the United States when the Nazis came to power in Germany. Initially, the tall, statuesque, green-eyed blonde was portrayed in Nazi propaganda as a national heroine, until her half-Jewish origins were discovered and she was expelled from the Offenbach Fencing Club. Nevertheless, the Nazis w ere keen to let her compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games because of her outstanding record and to uphold the façade that Jews were not automatically barred from selection for the German national team. Helene Mayer's own reasons for accepting the invitation of the Reichssportführer to return to Germany from America were more complex.
Firstly, as a German national, there was no other way she could compete in the Games and defend the title she had won in 1928. Secondly, although reared in the Jewish faith, she felt herself a German and wished to represent her country. Thirdly, she had not seen her mother and two brothers who still lived in Frankfurt (her father had died in 1931) since her departure from Germany. Possibly, pressure was exerted by the Nazi authorities through threats to her family in Germany, though this cannot now- be proved. In any event, Helene Mayer competed in Berlin, winning the silver medal in individual foils while the gold was won by the Hungarian Jewess, Ilona Elek-Schacherer, perhaps the outstanding woman fencer in history. On the victors' rostrum, the fair-haired Helene gave the obligatory Deutsche Gruss, wearing the white uniform of the German team replete with swastika badge. After the ceremonies were over, she returned to the United States where she became an American citizen and won the US foil championships eight times in all - in 1934-5, 1937-9, 1941-2 and 1946.
Helene Mayer returned to Germany for the first time since the Berlin Games shortly before her death on 15 October 1953.