Hans von Tschammer und Osten received a high Dutch award in 1937 in gratitude for his work for the Olympic Games in Berlin. In the years before, he had closed German sports to Jewish and socialist practitioners.
Hans von Tschammer und Osten in 1938. Photo Federal Archives via Wikicommons
Since the turn of the century, the Netherlands has given about 200 top honors to foreign rulers and politicians reports RTL News. In addition, the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Orange Nassau, the highest ranking order, is the most popular, especially used in diplomatic traffic.
Decorations
Giving such awards as a diplomatic tool is a well-known phenomenon in sports history. For example, three years before the German invasion of the Netherlands, a leading Nazi was appointed Grand Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau. Received in the name of Queen Wilhelmina National sports director Hans von Tschammer und Osten received this very high Dutch award on June 16, 1937.
The Dutch envoy in Berlin personally presented him with the decorations. According to the official statement of the Chancellery of the Dutch Orders, Von Tschammer und Osten received this honor as chairman of the German Olympic Games Committee in Berlin, but it is better to see it as a friendly diplomatic gesture.
This decoration may have been in the name of the queen, but the decision was made by the government. The vast majority of Grand Officer appointments went to foreigners as part of diplomatic traffic – just as in our time.
Nazi sports
Von Tschammer und Osten was appointed Reich Commissioner for Sports on May 8, 1933. In his acceptance speech he noted that the membership of non-Aryans would be investigated. “In principle, German sport is determined by the Aryan and not by the Jew.”
According to that idea, from then on, the German representatives for international sporting events were selected. Sports were subordinated to political and diplomatic interests.
A few months later, German sport was leveled according to the dictator’s principle, with Von Tschammer und Osten as sole ruler. Members of former socialist sports organizations were banned from sports as a complete group. They were only allowed to return to the regular sport with an affidavit of political conduct and the promise that they would no longer have any contact with so-called Marxist organizations. This group was never allowed to constitute more than twenty percent of the membership of a sports club.
Expensive plants
For example, from the beginning of National Socialism, German sport was used to exclude Jewish and socialist practitioners. As the National Sports Leader himself expressed in October 1933: ‘Almost fifteen years of humiliation, servitude and slave labor have brought our people to the abyss of its existence, its spiritual and moral outlook on life. Cowardly sycophancy by Marxist, pacifist wretches in Germany, who have encroached on all public posts like usurious plants, supported the inhuman work of destroying a people of 65 million souls.’
For diplomatic reasons, Von Tschammer und Osten nevertheless received that high Dutch distinction, at a time when there were still official contacts between the two countries and Hitler was a friendly head of state. In 1943, the sports leader, officially still wearing the decorations, died in exile in London in the name of the Queen.
After the Second World War, a special purification committee was established, but it was no longer concerned with people who had already died. It was therefore no longer necessary to assess the award for the man who used the sport to exclude and persecute millions of people.
Tags: Netherlands gave royal decoration Hans von Tschammer und Osten leader German Nazi sports
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