The exhibition ‘Between success and persecution - Jewish stars in German sport up to 1933 and beyond’ uses large-format sculptural presentations to honour the significant contribution made by Jewish athletes to the development of modern sport in Germany. As national players, world or European champions, Olympic champions or record holders, they were among the celebrated
idols of their time. Under the Nazi regime, they were marginalised as Jews, disenfranchised, forced to flee or murdered. The biographies of football pioneer Walther Bensemann, ten-time German athletics champion Lilli Henoch, national football player Julius Hirsch, Israeli and later German national basketball coach Ralph Klein, Olympic fencing champion Helene Mayer, world chess champion Emanuel Lasker and boxing champion Erich Seelig are presented, German tennis champion Nelly Neppach, German javelin throwing champion Martha Jacob, track and field athlete Gretel Bergmann, Olympic gymnastics champions Alfred and Gustav Felix Flatow, European weightlifting and wrestling champions Julius and Hermann Baruch, ice hockey player Rudi Ball and German national football player Gottfried Fuchs. The exhibition also establishes an important link to the present with the swimmer Sarah Poewe. She was the first Jewish athlete after the end of the Second World War to win an Olympic medal for Germany in Athens in 2004.
