A 1936 German 'Silver Man'

Rowing historians Tom Weil and Bill Miller were at the IRA National Championships this past weekend. They were taking care of the ‘rowing history’ bit of the regatta, making sure that those who were interested in the rich history of our sport got some information about the National Rowing Foundation (NRF) and the Rowing Hall of Fame. And at the same time showing off some big ‘rowing pots’. On Saturday evening, the NRF held a ceremony for the Class of 2014, seventeen rowers who were inducted into ‘the Hall’ – all introduced by Miller.

About the weekend’s events, Bill Miller said: ‘Wow! What a great weekend. The regatta was awesome, perfect weather, the NRF banquet went smoothly. The tent display went very well. I was amazed at how excited everyone got when they viewed the trophies, cups and programs. Photographing the trophies was prolific. I think we proved that promoting NRF/rowing history/Hall of Fame is an awesome way to connect with the rowing community and is important.’

One thing that Bill and Tom had on display in their tent was yet another ‘Silver Man’ statue. Somehow, a Tweet with a picture of the ‘Silver Man’ found its way across the pond and ended up on Greg Denieffe’s smart phone. Greg and I sent some messages back and forth late on Sunday afternoon about the statue (this was before I realised that it belonged to Miller). In the evening, I met Bill briefly when he was on his way back home to Massachusetts. I mentioned the ‘Silver Man’ that Greg had seen in a photograph. Bill smiled and unwrapped a small blanket he had in his car. ‘You mean this one?’ he said. And there it was.

Bill told me that it’s German-made, of nickel-plated bronze and a commemorative piece from the 1936 Olympics Games in Berlin. He bought it from Germany a year ago, but it has no markings on it to reveal who made it. He thought it would be a nice statue to bring along to the IRA, as it had a connection to Daniel James Brown’s great story about ‘The Boys in the Boat’.

About the bronze statue that HTBS has had questions about earlier, Bill said: ‘In general, there were many bronzes made over many decades. Some with oarsmen standing, some seated in a boat.’

Many thanks to Bill Miller for sharing his statue with the HTBS’s readers.

Bundeswehr for Drygalla

Nothing interests the media more than a scandal, or so it seems. When the German rower Nadja Drygalla left the London Olympic Games in August when it was revealed that her boyfriend - and ex-oarsman, too - belonged, or had once belonged, to a far-right, neo-Nazi, party, the German and international media were all over the place to scrutinize her. Surely, Germany could not have a person rowing for her country if she had far-right political views, the story went... Well, Drygalla had never had any neo-Nazi political views, and the only thing one could maybe say on one hand was that she had a poor judgment choosing a boyfriend, but on the other hand, the party he (once) belonged to was 'politically correct' enough to have seats in some state parliaments, but not on a federal level.

After a several hour hearing conducted by the German Rowing Association, Deutscher Ruderverband, in September, the organisation’s president, Siegfried Kaidel, told the media that the Association stood behind Nadja Drygalla. Then on 1 November, news came that she has been allowed to join the German Military, the Bundeswehr, which in its ranks has around 744 athletes training while they are soldiers. This is a way for those top sportsmen and -women without a big-money sponsorship behind them to still be able to focus on their sport. This cost the Bundeswehr and German state about 32 million euros ($41 million) per year.

Read more about Nadja Drygalla and the Bundeswehr here.

The German Champion Gustav Schäfer

Before Gustav Schäfer (1906-1991) began rowing, he played water polo, hockey, and football. But above all, he was interested in swimming, being a member of the swimming club in Dresden. It was also as a swimmer he got his nickname, “Gummi” [rubber], when he overran a favorite swimmer on a 1,500-metre course with the length of his hand, his opponent said: “Der Hund war zäh wie Gummi.” [“The dog was tough as rubber.” – alluding to Gustav’s family name, Schäfer, ‘shepard’.]

In 1929, ‘Gummi’ Schäfer was approached by the coach at Dresden Ruder-Verein and began thereafter successfully to row in fours and eights. However, by 1934, he was concentrating on the single scull, having joined another rowing club in Berlin, Skuller-Zelle, Berlin-Grünau, which had an English professional coach, Dan Cordery. With Cordery, Schäfer found the perfect trainer. In 1934, a little surprisingly, Schäfer became the German Champion in the single sculls, beating the favourite sculler, Herbert Buhtz. The same year, Schäfer also went to the European Championships in Lucerne and took the championship title in the single sculls.

The following year, ‘Gummi’, failed to defend his German title against Buhtz, but beat Buhtz at the 1936 German Championships and was selected to represent Germany in the single at the Olympic rowing event in Berlin. In the final, Schäfer did not have any problems winning the Olympic championship title with a couple of lengths ahead of Josef Hasenöhrl, Austria, and Daniel Barrow, USA. The favourite before the race, Ernst Rufli of Switzerland, Diamond Challenge Sculls winner both in 1935 and 1936, finished fifth. Here is a short clip from the single scull final (please, turn off the sound to get rid of the very annoying music):



After the Olympic gold medal, ‘Gummi’ Schäfer decided to quit rowing. Later that year, he and his rowing friend Georg von Opel founded the German Olympic Society. Schäfer’s old coach, Dan Cordery, tried to interest him to go back to sculling for the upcoming Olympic Games in 1940. But ‘Gummi’ was not game, and after the political climate grew worse in Nazi-Germany, Cordery left the country in 1938.

In a 1989 interview by Gisa Jacobus in Rudersport, the 80-year-old Schäfer, who by then was confined to a wheelchair remembers Cordery, “Mein lieber, englischer Trainer”.

Schäfer died in Munich in 1991.

The German Champion Herbert Buhtz

Herbert Buhtz and his “Master” Coach, Tom Sullivan.

Herbert Buhtz (1911-2006) was one of Germany’s best scullers in the beginning of the 1930s. He began to row as a teenager at Ruderclub Alt-Werder Magdeburg, the rowing club in his home town of Magdeburg. Buhtz was only 18-year-old when he and his partner in the double scull, Gerhard von Düsterlho, became the club’s first German Champions in 1929. They repeated their success the following year. In 1931, Buhtz began rowing for Berliner Ruder-Klub, which was coached by the New Zealander, Tom Sullivan, who took Buhtz under his wings. Buhtz became German Champion in the single scull that year.

In 1932, Sullivan sent Buhtz and his fellow club member Gerhard Bötzelen to race in the Diamond Challenge Sculls at the Henley Royal Regatta. The Diamonds final became an all-German affair when Buhtz easily beat his clubkameraden. Later that year, at the Olympic double sculls final in Long Beach, California, Buhtz and Bötzelen took a silver after having been in the lead up to 1,800 metres, when they were passed by the Americans Kenneth Myers and Garrett Gilmore. The latter had taken an Olympic silver medal in the single sculls in 1924.

Herbert Buhtz also won the Diamonds at Henley in July 1934, while the single scull European Championships title in August the same year was won by the German champion in the single scull, Gustav Schäfer. However, the following year, Buhtz became the German champion again.

When Coach Tom Sullivan left Berliner Ruder-Klub in October 1936 to move to Austria, Buhtz wrote a long celebratory article in the German rowing magazine, Wassersport:

“Although a German rowing club engages an Englishman [sic!] as trainer, this is in no way a matter of national feeling. The main point is what the teacher is capable of imparting and not what mother tongue he happens to have. […] Tom Sullivan was entirely worthy of the great confidence we had in him. Of the 490 victories won by Berliner Ruderklub Tom was responsible for 224 during the eleven years he supervised the training of the club. He was known as a master of the hard English school, of strict discipline and exact method of rowing. [- - -] His work and mature art convinced everyone. He was an Englishman with an international outlook and an honest admiration for the Germans, a fascinating personality whom young and old under his jurisdiction respected and whom oarsmen from all parts of Germany were attracted. [- - -]”
(From Hylton Cleaver: Sporting Rhapsody (1951), pp 48-49)

In a TV programme from 1989 about the Henley Royal Regatta, which I watched the other night (on a DVD), Herbert Buhtz was interviewed at Henley by the British TV crew. This German gentleman was utterly charming and praised the Henley spectators for their enthusiasm for the 1932 and 1934 Diamonds winner, although he was not an Englishman. (He elegantly steered away from the interviewer’s question about rowing for Nazi-Germany…)

After the Second World War, Buhtz was one of the old members that re-established the Berliner Ruder-Klub, and for a time also acted as coach at the club. He died in Berlin at the age of 95.

Women Rowing In Style

The 1951 and 1952 German champions in style rowing: Ruth Roloff, Rosemarie Bick, Lore Häger, Hanna Müller and coxswain Elvira Lasarewitz of PSV Bremen.

A little footnote to the HTBS entry Rowing Skills & Rowing Relay Races on 23 August could be another relatively unknown rowing discipline, ‘Style Rowing for Women’, or, ‘Stilrudern für Frauen’ as it was called in Germany, which seems to be one of the few countries where these unusual rowing competitions were held on a regular basis. According to the German Rowing Association’s website the first style rowing regatta for women was held in 1919. There was even a national championship for women in coxed quadruple sculls in Germany between 1937 and 1969 (during 1951-1969 in the DDR, East-Germany; see the bottom for links with the names of the champions and their clubs).

However, I am having a hard time finding information about this discipline, and if women in other European countries at one point or another also competed in ‘style’ instead of ‘speed races’, or maybe both. Of course, this special type of competition was a historic relic from the time when women’s rowing was to beautify lakes and rivers with their presence, not to compete or race whom would cross the finish line first. (See also Rowing Women as Belles des Bateaux, or To Say Nothing of the Cat.)

More than fifteen years ago, when I was still living in Sweden, I wrote a very short piece about style rowing, and, if I remember it correctly, the course was something around 335 metres – odd distance, I know – and the umpires would check the crews’ style during their row down the course, meaning their technique, esthetic ‘Eleganz’, choreography, togetherness, etc. The crews would start with a certain amount of points, which would be deducted along the way depending on lack of the elements mentioned above, or mistakes made during their row.

Anyone who knows more about this, in our time, ‘odd’ rowing discipline is more than welcome to contact HTBS, and I will post the information on this blog.

The 1962 DDR champions Helga Schmidt, Ingrid Fischer, Antje Thieß, Renate Boesler, and coxswain Ursula Bader of TSC Oberschöneweide.

The two photographs in this entry are from the website of Rüsselsheimer Ruder-Klub 08 e. V., and it was also there I found the following two links with lists of the German champions in 'Doppelvierer mit Steuerfrau, Stilrudern - Frauen, 1937-1955' and 'DDR-Doppelvierer mit Steuerfrau, Stilrudern - Frauen, 1951-1969'.