(This note has little to do with the Germanna Colonies, but I found the material interesting.) Question: Who was the only German to win the heavy weight boxing title? Some of the younger people may have a hard time remembering this answer.
The man won this title in 1930 at Yankee Stadium. The opponent was Jack Sharkey, who lost on a foul. This was not too pleasing to the winner who would have preferred an “honest” win. Our champion defended the title against Young Stribling in 1931. In a rematch with Sharkey a year later, our German lost to Sharkey on a controversial split decision. Our German friend had to start over at the bottom of the ladder. Eventually he worked his way up to fight with Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium in 1936. Our German won against Louis who had never been beaten. Then he won by default over Jimmy Braddock and qualified for another match against Joe Louis in 1938 who was by then the heavy weight champion.
In that fight, Joe Louis so mauled Max Schmeling in the first two minutes that Schmeling’s trainer threw in the towel.
The surprising thing is that Louis and Schmeling were personal friends and remained so for many years. The government in Germany had tried to make propaganda from Schmeling’s first victory over Joe Louis but Joe Louis knew that this was not Schmeling himself talking. On the contrary, Schmeling became an embarrassment to the Germany government and they ended up drafting him into the paratroopers.
Schmeling retired from boxing in 1948, and four years later became the Coca-Cola representative in the area of Hamburg. He succeeded at this very well. Schmeling celebrated his 96th birthday last September 28.
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Perhaps this story was of special interest to me because I remember the 1938 rematch. At the time we lived in a very forested area which I had to walk through in the darkness to go to school. But being a good German, I did not let the forest scare me (since I was eight at the time, that was not really true).
Our family was so deep into the woods that we did not have electricity, so when the Louis Schmeling match came up in 1938, the men folks (and the boys) walked over the hill to a neighbor’s house. When we got there, our host could say, “You missed it. It is over.”
(30 Nov 01)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.