Gottfried von Cramm

Who was Gottfried von Cramm?

Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von Cramm, was a German amateur tennis champion who won the French Open twice. He was ranked number 2 in the world in both 1934 and 1936, and number 1 in the world in 1937. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1977, an organisation which considers that he is "most remembered for a gallant effort in defeat against Don Budge in the 1937 Interzone Final at Wimbledon".

Von Cramm represented Germany during the rise of the Nazi party to power in the 1930s. The Nazi regime attempted to exploit von Cramm's appearance and skill as a symbol of Aryan supremacy, but he refused to identify with Nazism. He was persecuted as a homosexual by the German government and jailed briefly in 1938.

Von Cramm figured briefly in the gossip-columns as the sixth husband of Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress.