In its few lines, this ap­peal by Ham­burg sports club “Schild” “shield” of June 1933 il­lus­trates the sit­u­a­tion of Ger­many’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion as well as Jew­ish re­ac­tions to it, al­though its pur­pose merely was to an­nounce the found­ing of a sports club. The let­ter was writ­ten by the German-​Jewish War Vet­er­ans’ As­so­ci­a­tion Vaterländischer Bund jüdischer Frontsol­daten founded in 1919, which be­came a chap­ter of the Reich As­so­ci­a­tion of Jew­ish War Vet­er­ans Re­ichs­bund jüdischer Frontsol­daten, or RjF in 1920. The as­so­ci­a­tion’s mis­sion was to op­pose the defama­tion of Jew­ish sol­diers while em­pha­siz­ing their loy­alty to their Ger­man home­land. Sports ini­tially did not play a role within the RjF, as it was not con­cerned with leisure time ac­tiv­i­ties, but with teach­ing val­ues and ideas. There­fore, the cir­cu­lar an­nounces that “now,” mean­ing in June 1933, a sports club was going to be es­tab­lished. This late foun­da­tion date was spe­cific to Ham­burg since the RjF had had to re­al­ize two things as early as the mid-1920s: first, the sig­nif­i­cance of sports in cre­at­ing com­mu­nity spirit, and sec­ondly, the im­por­tance of sports in prepar­ing for phys­i­cal self-​defense. The sports as­so­ci­a­tion “Schild” was of­fi­cially reg­is­tered in 1925, but its ini­tial re­la­tions to the RjF were merely co­op­er­a­tive. In 1933 how­ever, “Schild” was in­te­grated into the RjF owing to the in­creas­ingly threat­en­ing at­mos­phere. Until 1933 there had not been a “Schild”-​chapter in Ham­burg.

The sports club “Schild” in Hamburg: a reaction to the “Aryan articles”

This cir­cu­lar was prompted by the in­tro­duc­tion of the “Aryan ar­ti­cles Ari­er­para­grafen,” a piece of anti-​Jewish leg­is­la­tion which was first ap­plied to the civil ser­vice and legal pro­fes­sions (April 7, 1933) and sub­se­quently cir­cu­lated to sports as­so­ci­a­tions and clubs. It was im­me­di­ately and ea­gerly ap­plied by many Ger­man or­ga­ni­za­tions even be­fore being for­mally writ­ten into law. Ger­many’s largest sports or­ga­ni­za­tion, the Ger­man Gym­nasts’ As­so­ci­a­tion Deutsche Turn­er­schaft, did so on April 8, 1933, one day after the law had been passed. The “Schild” cir­cu­lar made di­rect ref­er­ence to the “Aryan ar­ti­cles” and ex­plained that while Jew­ish ath­letes had been “im­mo­bi­lized,” it was im­por­tant to con­tinue prac­tic­ing sports, for which the “Schild” clubs could pro­vide the basis, as “phys­i­cal ex­er­cise for Jew­ish youths is one of the fore­most ne­ces­si­ties of our time.” This ar­gu­ment also ex­plains the found­ing of a “Schild” chap­ter in Ham­burg. The goal was to pro­vide a broader basis for sports and to ex­tend the RjF ac­tiv­i­ties in Ham­burg to the area of sports. Con­sid­er­ing the his­tory of Jew­ish sports, it is hardly sur­pris­ing that Jew­ish fe­male ath­letes were ad­dressed ex­plic­itly. Women’s gym­nas­tics had been an ac­cepted part of Jew­ish gym­nas­tic clubs for some time and much ear­lier than was the case in sports clubs with­out a clear de­nom­i­na­tional af­fil­i­a­tion which ac­cepted both Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish mem­bers. By specif­i­cally ad­dress­ing women as well as men, “Schild” demon­strated that it was not in­ter­ested in merely prop­a­gat­ing an ath­letic male body image, but that it rec­og­nized phys­i­cal ex­er­cise as highly im­por­tant for both men and women, and sub­se­quently even as es­sen­tial for sur­vival.

“Schild” and its mission

“Schild” was not the only Jew­ish sports or­ga­ni­za­tion, since the Zion­ists had their own clubs be­long­ing to the Makkabi as­so­ci­a­tion. These two groups were ri­vals until 1933 be­cause they had orig­i­nated from di­a­met­ri­cally op­posed po­si­tions. While the RjF de­fended its Ger­man pa­tri­otic ethos and placed great hope in as­sim­i­la­tion — al­beit under great pres­sure after 1933 — the Zion­ist Makkabi clubs ad­vo­cated em­i­gra­tion and of­fered prepa­ra­tion courses. In 1933, such dis­putes seemed mar­ginal how­ever, which is re­flected in the “Schild” cir­cu­lar’s state­ment that if one had been pre­vi­ously ac­tive in an­other Jew­ish club and felt “ide­o­log­i­cally” closer to it, one should re­main in this club and “be­come even more ac­tive” in it. Its goal truly was the “phys­i­cal train­ing” of all young Jews. To the “Schild” or­ga­ni­za­tion, this did not nec­es­sar­ily mean prepa­ra­tion for em­i­gra­tion, how­ever (in­clud­ing Hakhshara — the train­ing to be­come a farmer in Pales­tine, for ex­am­ple), for the RjF did not re­motely con­sider ad­vo­cat­ing em­i­gra­tion in 1933. Their main goal was to en­able its mem­bers to phys­i­cally de­fend them­selves. There­fore the list of sports of­fered in­cluded not only tra­di­tional sports (i. e. track and field, swim­ming, soc­cer), but also box­ing and jiu-​jitsu, a Japan­ese form of self-​defense. The Japan­ese mar­tial arts judo and jiu-​jitsu were in­tro­duced in Ger­many in the early 20th cen­tury and were en­thu­si­as­ti­cally adopted and de­vel­oped. “Schild” played a major part in this process, and jiu-​jitsu be­came one of the dis­ci­plines in which Jew­ish ath­letes were highly suc­cess­ful. Be­gin­ning in 1925, the RjF news­pa­per reg­u­larly printed jiu-​jitsu class train­ing hours, which clearly hints at which sports were im­por­tant to the RjF.

As the cir­cu­lar shows, the RjF’s mis­sion was not only to pro­mote mar­tial arts and phys­i­cal fit­ness, but it also ad­vo­cated the idea of the Ger­man cit­i­zen of the Jew­ish faith. This is the essence of the state­ment that every­one was wel­come to “Schild” who was of a “pa­tri­otic mind­set,” even if they had not fought in the First World War. To the RjF, this meant the stead­fast link be­tween Ju­daism and “Ger­man­ness.” Within this con­cept, “pa­tri­otic” was both the ra­tio­nal and the emo­tional key term. The RjF con­sid­ered it­self part of Ger­man so­ci­ety.

Developments until the ban in 1938

The pre­emp­tive and ruth­less ap­pli­ca­tion of the “Aryan ar­ti­cles” by Ger­man sports clubs in par­tic­u­lar demon­strated how quickly the de­mand of Jews to “get out!” was re­al­ized as early as 1933 — at that point with­out any legal en­force­ment or basis, as needs to be pointed out. In the years fol­low­ing 1933, Jew­ish sports clubs did in­deed in­crease their mem­ber­ship sig­nif­i­cantly. In Ham­burg 10% of the Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion were also mem­bers in a Jew­ish sports club. Yet sports were un­able to halt po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments. In the run-​up to the 1936 Olympic Games in Garmisch-​Partenkirchen and Berlin, the regime still ex­er­cised re­straint to­wards sports clubs since it did not want to jeop­ar­dize this gi­gan­tic pro­pa­ganda project. Yet there was an SA SA: Sturmabteilung [Storm Di­vi­sion]-​slogan which went: “Once the Olympics are over, we will beat the Jews to a pulp.” “Wenn die Olympiade vor­bei, schla­gen wir die Juden zu Brei.” In 1938, all Jew­ish sports clubs were banned.