Background
Daniel Prenn was born in Poland in 1904.
Daniel Prenn was born in Poland in 1904.
An engineer by profession. Dr Prenn first achieved prominence in the German tennis world in 1926, when he was ranked tenth in the national lists.
A talented athlete who as a student at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenberg had been a member of winning teams in both handball and football, Prenn first won the German tennis championships in 1929 and by 1932 was ranked first in European tennis. Energetic, extremely steady and calm, Prenn was endowed with a stocky but strong physique, and possessed a wide variety of strokes and deadly placements which wore down his opponents. In 1932, his best year, Prenn was ranked sixth in the world and, together with his friend Gottfried von Cramm, scored a great victory over the British team of Fred Perry and Bunny Austin to win the European zone of the Davis Cup. Three years earlier he had won both his singles’ matches when Germany defeated Britain in the Davis Cup competition.
Following the Nazi rise to power, Prenn, however, was barred from further competition and from the national squad. In April 1933 the German Tennis Federation had passed an official resolution declaring that ‘No Jew may be selected for a national team or for the Davis Cup’. The Reichssportführer sent Prenn (who was abroad) a telegram asking him not to participate in international tennis competitions but to return to Germany. This he refused to do, but his wife received the Reichsmedaille on his behalf from Franz von Papen to mark the German Davis Cup victory in the European zone.
Prenn left Germany and moved to England, where he made a new life and became a British subject. He continued to play tennis and in 1934 was ranked seventh in the world in doubles, but he never quite matched the brilliance of his performances in Germany.
In 1955 his eldest son Oliver (born 1938) became British junior tennis champion at Wimbledon and his youngest son was one of the world's leading racket players.