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For years now I’ve had a saved Ebay search for Muhlen Francks. Back in 2020 I thought I’d grabbed a fantastic lot which included a couple Jesse Owens cards only for it to get lost in the mail, returned to sender (in Germany), and then eaten by US Customs when it was re-sent to me. While I’ve gotten a few other Jesse Owens cards since then I’ve not seen any lots with Owens cards come up at a decent price since then.

In fact, Muhlen Franck lots don’t seem to come up very often in general. I can find the individual cards I want such as Marjorie Gestring or soccer action but aside from buying a complete album, the biggest lots I see are maybe a half dozen cards. Late last year though, around the same time Jason sent me a pair of cards, I got a notification about a huge lot of almost 160 cards and couldn’t help dropping a bid on them. I did not expect to win and when I got the lot for around $25 I was absolutely shocked.

It took me a long time to get through that many cards since I only recognized a handful of athletes and the back information is all in German. No Jesse Owens. Lots of German athletes. Thankfully no Hitler cards. And definitely a few cards which I immediately recognized as being absolutely worth the purchase even before researching everyone in the set.

This post is a long one. Consider yourself warned.

These four cards in particular are the ones that jumped out at me. Sonja Henie in her signature shorter skirt and white skates remains one of the most successful figure skaters of all time as she won gold in three consecutive Olympics and was the World Champion for 10 consecutive years. In 1936 card she was at the end of her run as an amateur athlete as after her Olympic gold, she stop competing and became a professional performer and actress.

The US Mens Eights card is one of the only cards of the Boys in the Boat and was a lot of fun to find since I not only watched the movie with my kids a couple years ago but my youngest was actually reading the book in school when I received the package. He was very excited to see that I had a real card from 1936.

Babe Didrickson was another of the cards in the lot which disappeared in the belly of US customs. This one is about her exploits in the 1932 Olympics* and appropriately shows her with the javelin. It’s unfortunate that she was apparently a racist since her contributions to women’s sport were so large.

*A decent number of the Muhlen Franck cards recap the Los Angeles games or serve as previews to the Berlin games and as such feature athletes who didn’t actually compete in Berlin.

And finally, a photo of the first official Olympic torch being lit at the end of the relay is pretty cool. While the concept of a central flame had been demonstrated four years earlier, the whole ceremony and everything that we still know today started in 1936. I’m increasingly cool on the Olympics but I have to admit that being reminded of the history of it—even if it started with the Nazis—is one of those things that makes me remember being a kid and treating the Olympics as a special event.

A few other cards of immediate note. I’m always happy to add vintage soccer cards. This pair goes very well with the card I already have because they both depict Italy at the top of its powers when it won the World Cups on both sides of its 1936 Olympics gold. Nice to have a team photo in color as well as more action from the final against Austria.

It’s also nice to have another Luz Long card. He’s on one my my Jesse Owens cards and I do like the myth and how Long represents in terms of what we believe sport and the Olympics should be. Yes there’s a swastika on the front of his jersey but he was the first person to congratulate Owens and and celebrate with him in front of everyone.

The last card here is less about the athlete but just because when I turned it over I couldn’t help but laugh. Jack Torrance was the best shot putter around in the early 1930s but by the time of the 1936 games was no longer in competitive shape. However that name is now forever associated with The Shining.

I’ll go through the rest of the cards in larger batches—sorted roughly by discipline—since they didn’t jump out at me during my initial pass through the stack. I’m going to just go through the cards in the order they are in each photo starting with the first and largest group of Track and Field cards.

American Forrest Towns won gold in the 110m Hurdles, setting a World Record of 14.1 seconds in one of his heats. Later in 1936 he would become the first person to break 14 seconds with a time of 13.7—a mark that would last until 1950. He’s depicted on the first card putting his spikes one and on the second card in action setting his World Record.

The next three cards depict the Steeplechase. Two action cards which show Finn Volmari Iso-Hollo successfully defending his 1932 Olympics gold with a World Record 9:03.8 time. And one candid image of German Alfred Dompert who won the bronze medal.

The last card of the top row and first two cards of the middle row are all related to the 4×400 relay. Two team photos are of the winning  British team which upset the Americans and the third place German team. The other card depicts the race itself which is described as a thrilling battle even though Britain won by two whole seconds.

The next four cards all depict the Decathlon. Silver medalist Robert Clark is shown throwing the discus. The start of the first event, the 100 meters, is on the next card. And the last two cards are Erwin Huber. He’s identified as “sergeant” on the pole vaulting card which is from the preview portion of the set while the other card shows him in action in Berlin where he would finish seventh.

To the bottom row. Card one features action from the 80m Hurdles. The next card depicts German 80m hurdler Ruth Engelhard who did not compete in the 1936 Olympics but had won gold in the 1934 Women’s World Games.* The next card is of Hans Scheele, a German who placed 15th (ie. he did not make it out of his quarterfinal heat) in the 400m Hurdles 

*Really interesting to learn that the early Olympics only had a limited number of women’s events and so, in response, a separate Women’s Games had to be set up.

The last three cards are of sprinters. First, two cards of Erich Borchmeyer. One shows him running in his club uniform while the other shows him kitted up for Germany and competing in the 100 Meters where he won two heats and finished fifth in the final. The last card is of Gerd Hornberger who finished fourth in his quarterfinal heat. Both men however were part of Germany’s bronze medal winning 4×100 Relay team however.

Starting at the top again with a card of the the German women’s 4×100 Relay team. They set a world record in their heat and had a massive lead going into the last leg of the final only to mess up their exchange and get disqualified.

The next four cards are related to the 1500 Meters. The action card describes it as the “most interesting running competition” since the top two finishers  were both under the previous world record time while the top five finishers were all under the previous Olympic record. The next card depicts gold medalist, and the first New Zealand Olympic medalist, Jack Lovelock in a really nice candid image. After that is American Gene Venzke who the card lists as both an 800m and 1500m runner but who only competed in the 1500m where he finished 9th in the final. Swede Erik Ny is the last 1500m card. He also made it to the final but finished 11th.

The final card on the top row is German Wolfgang Dessecker who made it to the semifinal heats in the 800 Meters but not the finals.

The middle is a mix of long distance events. The first card depicts Janusz Kusociński from Poland who won gold in the 1932 10,000 Meters in Los Angeles but did not compete in Berlin. The card of marathoner Heinrich Brauch is another athlete who didn’t compete in 1936. Finn Gunnar Höckert won gold in the 5000 Meters with an Olympic record 14:22.2. Harold Whitlock won gold for Britain with an Olympic record 4:30:41.4 in the 50km Walk. The 5000 Meter action image is labeled as Finland’s double victory because Lauri Lehtinen finished second behind Höckert. And the 10,000 Meter action image shows three Finns out in front of the pack as they would go on to sweep the podium with Iso-Hollo adding a bronze medal to his Steeplechase gold.

Moving to the bottom row and the field events. Chūhei Nambu from Japan won bronze in the 1932 Long Jump but did not compete in 1936. Wilhelm Leichum came in 4th in the Long Jump where Jesse Owens outdueled Luz Long. Gustav Wegner was the 1934 European Champion in pole vault but did not compete in Berlin. George Spitz was the favorite for the 1932 High Jump but picked up a knock and only finished 9th. He did not compete in 1932. Ibolya Csák won gold for Hungary in the Women’s High Jump. Given the context of the Berlin Games, the fact that Csák was Jewish is especially noteworthy. And Kalevi Kotkas won the 1934 European Championship in High Jump and took the silver medal in Berlin for Finland.

On to the last batch of track and field cards and starting off here with more high jumpers. The first two cards are of Elfriede Kaun who finished 3rd behind Csák. The first card also depicts Gretel Kuhlmann, a runner who does not look to have competed in Berlin and who I’m assuming is actually Margarete Kuhlmann. The third card is Ilse Niederhoff, a German high jumper who did not compete in Berlin.*

*I can find her name on the results of various international dual meets on German Wikipedia but she does not appear to have a profile anywhere.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy seeing pre-Fosbury high jump cards since my mental image of the sport is completely different than what the cards show. Also, looking into the Women’s High Jump competition is a bit of a rabbit hole since it offers both the story of Gretel Bergmann, one of the best German high jumpers who was excluded from the team due to being Jewish, and the story of Dora/Heinrich Ratjen whose complete sporting record was basically expunged due to being either male or intersex.

A pair of cards of Gerhard Stöck show him winning gold in Javelin and profile him as both a Javelin and Shot Putter. He did indeed win bronze in Shot Put as well. A card of Karl Hein winning gold in the Hammer plus a pair of cards of Hans Woellke who took gold in the Shot Put cap a trifecta of German throwing golds in this Olympics. The card of Sulo Bärland meanwhile slots between Woellke and Stöck for the complete Shot Put podium while the card of Erwin Blask gives us the silver medal to Hein’s gold in the Hammer.

Moving to women’s field events. The card of Discus champions shows Germans Gisela Mauermayer(gold) and Paula Mollenhauer(bronze) flanking Pole Jadwiga Wajs(silver). Tilly Fleischer took gold for Germany in the Javelin.* Wajs’s solo card Germanizes her name to “Hedwig Weiss” and confused me for a lot longer than it should’ve.

*The story about her daughter claiming to be the illegitimate daughter of Hitler is fucking wild. 

Matti Järvinen won the 1932 Javelin gold and set the world record 10 times, the last of which occurred in 1936, but only finished 5th in Berlin. Shotputter Hans Heinrich Sievert finished 6th in Los Angeles but 10th in Berlin. Discus gold medalist Gisela Mauermayer is shown with the shot even though the first Olympics Womens Shot Put was in 1948. Mauermayer is described as the best female athlete at the time mainly because she won the Pentathlon at the 1934 Women’s Games. And finally Javelin silver medalist Luis Krüger is shown in action.

The next batch is all winter sports from the 1936 Winter Olympics held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. While the Berlin Summer Games are correctly held up as a Nazi propaganda exercise, the fact that the Winter Games served as a test run was something I only learned once I got these cards.

The first card is of Ivan Brown and Alan Washbond who won gold in the Two-man Bobsleigh. I’m amazed at how different and more exposed their equipment is compared to the sleighs today.

Alpine Skiing appeared for the first time in the Olympics and Franz Pfnür won the first gold medal in the Men’s Combined while Christl Cranz won gold in the Women’s. The absence of a helmet in Pfnür’s card is wild and I really like the mountains in the background of Crantz’s.

I mentioned Sonja Henie earlier in this post but Maxi Herber and Ernst Baier won the Pairs gold in Figure Skating. Baier has his one solo card as well where instead of winning the Men’s silver medal he’s shown with a video camera.

Gustav Lantschner won the silver medal in the Men’s Alpine Combined while Käthe Grasegger won silver in the Women’s as the German team had a dominant performance in the inaugural event.

Four Cross Country cards finish out the second row.  Erik August Larsson took gold in the Men’s 18km and was part of the bronze medal winning Swedish team in the 4×10km Relay. Elis Wiklund led a Swedish sweep of the podium in the 50km race. Kalle Jalkanen was part of the Finnish gold medal winning team in the 4×10km. And Oddbjørn Hagen took home three medals with a gold in the Nordic Combined and silvers in the 18km and 4×10km with Norway.

I really like the card of the gold medal winning UK Ice Hockey team. Though the way that tournament was run is pretty sus since the UK-Canada game in the first match of the second round ended up being the championship match despite each team playing four more games.

Birger Ruud took gold in Ski Jumping for Norway even though the silver medalist actually jumped further. I will never understand the style points part of Ski Jumping. Ivar Ballangrud was the most successful athlete in the games with three gold medals and one silver across the four Speed Skating races. he won the 500m, 5000m, and 10,000m and finished second in the 1500m. Pierre Musy was the pilot for the champion Swiss Four-man Bobsleigh team. Charles Mathiesen had to set an Olympic record in order to beat Ballungrud in the 1500m Speed Skating. And Karl Schafer won the Men’s Figure Skating gold over Baier.

Moving back to the Summer Games with all the boat disciplines all together. Starting with the first row we have the Swedish double kayak team of Sven Johansson and Erik Bladström who won gold in the K-2 10,000m Folding Kayaks face. Ernest Krebs won gold in the K-1 10,000m race. Gustav Schafer won gold in the Single Sculls. The German team of Dieter Arend, Gerhard Gustmann, and Herbert Adamski won gold in the Coxed Pair race. And finally the German team of Willi Eichhorn and Hugo Strauß won the Coxless Pair race.

The next row starts off with the British team of Jack Beresford and Dick Southwood who won gold in the Double Sculls. I’m not going to name everyone on the German team which won the Coxless Fours but it’s worth noting here that the Germans won 5 of the 7 mens rowing events and medaled in the other two as well.

Henry Robert Pearce won gold in the 1928 and 1932 games in Single Sculls but had turned pro by 1936 so did not compete in Berlin. The Czech double canoe team of Jan Brzák-Felix and Vladimír Syrovátka won gold in the C-2 1000m Sprint. Brzák-Felix would go on to compete in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, winning gold in London and silver in Helsinki.

The sailboat card is labeled as “Dr. Bischoff” but I have no idea if it’s Peter or Fritz since both men were part of medal-wining Sailing teams and the card back is not clear which event or who the other team members are.

And finishing off row two is Gregor Hradetzky who won two gold medals in Berlin, taking both the K-1 1000 Meters and the K-1 10,000 Meters Folding Kayak. It took me a while to recognize the distinction between sprint and folding kayaks since folding kayaks were only used in the 1936 games where there were two different 10,000m races.

On to row three. In the same way that Hradetzky won the 10,000m Folding and Krebs won the 10,000m Sprint, Sweden won the 10,000m Double Folding and Germany won the 10,000m Double Sprint. The German team consitsed of Paul Wevers and Ludwig Landen. Herbert Buhtz is pictured on a single scull but he won silver in the 1932 Double Sculls and did not compete in Berlin. The German Eights team ended up taking bronze in a photo finish with the US and Italy. And Willi Kaidel and Joachim Pirsch finished behind the British team and took silver in Double Sculls.

Moving on to aquatics. Lenore Kight-Wingard won bronze in the Women’s 400m Freestyle after having taken silver in 1932. Kight-Wingard would go on the become a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Ferenc Csik is also a Hall of Famer due to having won gold in the Men’s 100m Freestyle as well as a bronze in the 4×200m Freestyle Relay.

Hall of Famer Ria Mastenbroek won four medals, three of them gold in the Berlin Games. Mastenbroek took gold in the Women’s 100m Freestyle, 400m Freestyle (over Kight-Wingard), and the 4×100m Freestyle Relay and finished second in the 100m backstroke.* Mastenbroek is also depicted with the rest of her gold-medal-winning relay team.

*The Wikipedia write-up on the 100m backstroke has some interesting context regarding defending champion Eleanor Holm getting ejected from the US team. 

Gisela Arendt won two medals, a bronze in the 100m Freestyle that Mastenbroek won and a silver in the 4×100m Freestyle Relay as part of the German team that finished behind the Netherlands.

Hertha Schieche starts off the second row. Schieche was a very successful German diver who did not compete in Berlin. Otto Wille* and Helmuth Fischer were successful German swimmers who did not compete in Berlin. All three of them did take part in the 1934 European Aquatics Championships with Schieche wining the Women’s 10m Highboard and Fischer and Wille finishing second and third in the Men’s 100m Freestyle.

*About whom I cannot find any information.

Jeanette Campbell was the first Argentine woman to compete in the Olympics and took home the silver medal in the 100m Freestyle. She would also go on to become a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame. The German Women’s 4×100 Freestyle team also got its own card. This would be the second card that Arendt appears on. Hall of Famer Dina Senff beat her compatriot Mastenbroek in the 100m Backstroke despite missing one of her turns and having to stop and touch the wall.

The gold medal winning Hungarian water polo team starts off row three. Hiungary and Germany actually tied in their final group but Hungary had a better goal average (goals scored divided by goals against)* and so took gold. The Men’s 10m Platform winners Marshall Wayne, Elbert Root, and Hermann Stork are all depicted together. I’m finding that I really like the cards that show the podium winners celebrating together.

*One of the interesting things about looking at old sporting event is seeing how the tournaments and tie breakers were set up and noting what seems weird or unfair today. In this case, the way that earlier games are carried forward into later rounds strikes me as wrong (even while I admit that it has logical sense) and the idea of goal average rather than goal difference is completely new to me.

Erwin Sietas is another Hall of Fame Swimmer. He won the Men’s 200m Breaststroke silver. The 1936 Olympics is actually really interesting regarding the Breaststroke because it captures a moment when the Butterfly was considered a part of the Breaststroke but before it had eclipsed it. In 1936 the three winners were “traditional” Breaststrokers and the highest Butterfly finish was 4th place. By 1948, only one finalist used the traditional stoke and he came in last place.

And finally Käthe Köhler won the bronze medal in the Women’s 10m Platform. I did not get a card of the winner Dorothy Poynton-Hill which makes me a little sad since it would be fun to have a Muhlen Franck and a Garbaty of the same person.*

*Now I’m wondering how many overlaps there actually are between those two sets. Aside from Poynton-Hill I know that Henie has a card and it appears that Schieche does too.

Now we get to the section of the lot of cards with smaller disciplines and fewer cards. As a result the photos won’t be as thematically consistent in terms of the cards they show. I’ve tried to group things as best I can.

The first row here are all Fencing cards starting with the winners of the Men’s Foil: Giulio Gaudini, Edward Gardère, and Giorgio Bocchino. Franco Riccardi won tow golds, one for the Men’s Épée and a second for the Men’s Team Épée.

Endre Kabos and Gustavo Marzi are pictured together as the gold and silver medalists in the Men’s Sabre. Kabos is pictured again as part of the Hungarian team which won the Men’s Team Sabre gold. Kabos is notable as a Jewish athlete and while I’ll include a list of which athletes in this post died during World War 2, Kabos is the only one to have been interned into forced labor from which he did not survive.

The last Fencing card shows the Women’s Foil podium of Ilona Elek, Helene Mayer, and Ellen Preis. This was the only women’s event in the Olympics and I didn’t realize how interesting this card is until I started writing this post and discovered that all three women were Jewish.

Elek, as a Hungarian, ended up being excluded from any competition for about a decade after Hungary entered World War 2 on the side of Germany. Yet she picked up after World War 2 as if nothing had happened winning World Championship and Olympic medals up through 1956.

Mayer competed for Germany even though she’d been stripped of her citizenship and resettled in the US in 1935. She was the only German Jew to medal and it’s apparently a debate about if she was an opportunist, used by the IOC to avoid a boycott, or used by the Nazis by threatening her family still in Germany. She would go on to have a successful career in the US winning 8 Women’s Foil championships and even a men’s title (which was stripped after two days).

Preis’s career was similar to Elek’s albeit not quite as successful. She did however hold the women’s record for the longest span of Olympics competed in since she took part in the 1932 and 1956 games.

Row two are all Gymnastics cards. Alfred Schwarzmann is a good one to start off with since he won five medals including three golds. He won the All Around and is shown winning the Vault on this card. He was also part of the German Mens Team which won the Team Gold. Shwarzmann’s other medals were a bronze in the Horizontal Bar and a bronze in the Parallel Bars.

Alois Hudec won gold in the Rings. Georges Miez won gold on the Floor. There were no individual women’s events so the only gymnastics medal available to women was the Team All Around which Germany won. Looking into the women’s event is kind of wild since there was no floor exercise, the parallel bars didn’t have to be uneven,* and there was a group exercise which involved handheld apparatus like clubs or bows.

*The compulsory exercises were uneven but the voluntary exercises did not have to be. And yes the gymnastics scoring involves two passes on the apparatus, one compulsory pass that every athlete has to do and a second voluntary one that they get to create on their own. 

Konrad Frey meanwhile was the most decorated athlete in the entire Olympics with six medals including three golds.* In addition to being part of the German team, he took individual gold in the Parallel Bars and Pommel Horse, silver on the Horizontal Bar, and bronze in the All Around and Floor.

*Jesse Owens did have more golds with four. 

The bottom row consists of Wrestling and Boxing. The first card shows a Greco-Roman Featherweight match between Yaşar Erkan and Aarne Reini. While these are the two winners of the tournament—Erkan becoming the first ever Turkish gold medal winner—it is not the championship bout because the tournament was not structured as a knockout bracket.*

*Wrestling at this time used a “bad points” system where a loss by fall or unanimous decision earned 3 points, a loss by split decision earned 2 points, and a win by split decision earned 1 point. Wrestlers would be randomly paired each round and anyone with 5+ points after each was eliminated. Last wrestler standing wins.   

Kristjan Palusalu became the only wrestler to win gold in both Freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling as he did it in the Heavyweight division in both categories. This means he not only wrestled twice as many rounds as most competitors but in those 10 matches he only picked up 5 “bad points” total. He became an Estonian national hero, was sentenced to hard labor once the Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940, sentenced to death after trying to escape, sent to fight against Finland instead, and defected to Finland helped in part to being recognized by a Finnish athlete in the army.

The last card does not depict 1936 action but is instead Wolfgang Ehrl and Jean Földeák. Ehrl won the 1932 Greco Roman Featherweight silver medal. Földeák won the 1932 Greco Roman Middleweight silver medal. Only Ehrl competed in 1936 though, sinning Silver in the Freestyle Lightweight division.

Two Boxing cards. The first depicts Heavyweight champion Herbert Runge. The second is Flyweight champion Willy Kaiser. Both of these cards appear to show the championship fights since boxing is actually (and appropriately) a knockout bracket. After so many weird tournament formats it was nice to see one that looked familiar.

The first four cards here are all Weightlifting. Josef Manger won gold in the Heavyweight class.  The Middleweight podium consists of Germans Rudolf Ismayr and Adolf Wagner flanking the Egyptian gold medalist Khadr El-Touni.

In the same way that Jesse Owens stole the show on Track and Field, El-Touni became an Olympics legend in Weightlifting. He went into the Olympics with a world record that the International Weight Lifting Federation apparently didn’t recognize/believe and, after clinching gold, proved that he records were legitimate by continuing to lift for 45 minutes ultimately winning by 35kg over the silver medalist and setting a new world record.

El Touni’s total was so high that he actually beat the Light Heavyweight gold medalist Louis Hostin by 15kg.  The last Weightlifting card depicts Middleweight silver medalist Ismayr in action.

The last two cards on the first row and first two cards on the second row all depict shooting. I did not translate the backs before taking the photo and discovered that the first card of Sergeant Konrad Miersch is actually a Modern Pentathlon card since Miersch participated in the 1932 games but not 1936. Cornelius van Oyen won gold in the 25 Meter Rapid Fire Pistol. Willy Røgeberg won gold for the 50 Meter Rifle Prone. And Captain Heinz Hax finished in second place behind van Oyen in the 25 Meter Pistol.

Next come three cycling cards starting off with a pair of Toni Merkens. Merkens won gold in the Sprint. The German pair of Ernst Ihbe and Charly Lorenz won gold in the Tandem.

The last seven cards are all equestrian events. The first two cards here depict Captain von Stubbendorf who won gold in Individual Eventing as well as Team Eventing. This looks to have been a brutal event since almost only 27 out of the 50 competitors even finished and three horses died as a result of injuries sustained. Because of the number of withdrawals, only four of the 14 teams were even eligible to win the event.

1st lieutenent Heinz Pollay won two golds in both the Individual Dressage and Team Dressage. 1st lieutenant Kurt Hasse also won two golds in Individual Jumping and Team Jumping. Captain von Barnekow was also part of the German gold medal Jumping team Baron von Wagenheim was part of the German gold medal Eventing team. And Major FW Gerhard took an individual silver in Dressage and was part of the German gold medal Dressage team.

It was very obvious that all of the German competitors in riding and shooting were military as the cards use their ranks instead of their names.

Finally to the last photo. The first four cards are a handful of various sports starting with India’s gold medal winning Field Hockey team. the next card is action from the Germany-Switzerland Handball game. Germany would go on to win gold while the Swiss took bronze. Field Handball was only played in the Berlin games and was a predecessor to the Team Handball which is played inside and has been part of the Olympics since 1972.

The next card shows the Modern Pentathlon winners Gotthard Handrick, Charles Leonard, and Silvano Abbà. And finally the last sports card is Argentina Polo in action on the way to winning gold. This was the last time Polo was played in the Olympics.

The last batch of cards depict the opening or closing ceremonies as well as various organizers of the games. The last card of the first row is the Closing Ceremony. The next card is the Flags of the Nations as part of the Closing Ceremony. Following that is Baron Coubertain’s Message. This message is displayed on a marquee in the stadium.

Möge die Olympische flamme leuchten durch alle geschlechter zum wohle einer immer momer strebenden mutigeren und reineren menschheit!

May the Olympic flame shine through all generations for the benefit of an ever-striving, braver and purer humanity!

The next two cards depict the Olympic Flag. The one in daytime is the flag being raised at the start of the games.  The one at night is described on the back as the handover of the flag from Los Angeles to Berlin. At this time the Olympic tradition was for the previous host to only pass the flag on after the next Olympics had ended.

The last two cards on the second row are German State Secretary Theodor Lewald who was President of the 1936 Organizing Committee and instrumental to bring the games to Berlin. By the time the Olympics came around his role was mainly ceremonial since his Jewish ancestry meant that the Nazis had relieved him of any power. Still he was allowed to give the introductory address to the games.

The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, starts off the final row. He had come out of retirement to assist with Berlin getting the 1936 games and had only one year left to live after this card came out. Count Baillet-Latour was the head of the International Olympic Committee from 1925 to 1942.

Dr Carl Diem was the chief organizer of the Berlin games and claimed to have invented the torch relay. Reich Sports Leader von Tschammer und Osten is the Nazi who eventually took over the organization of the games and all German sport including making it difficult for Jewish athletes to train and compete while framing all sport about being a demonstration of aryan superiority. Dr Karl Ritter von Halt was the President of the 1936 Winter Olympics committee.

The last card shows Weightlifter Rudolph Ismayr taking the Olympic Oath at the beginning of the games.

And that’s that for the massive pile of Muhlen Francks. Over 5000 words is a lot of blog post so congratulations if you made it this far.

Died in the war

A brief postscript of sorts. Because of the lurking context of World War 2 it was impossible to not pay attention to the deceased dates that the athletes have and look up to see if they were lost during the fighting. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list but the following men mentioned in this post all died in action.

Silvano Abbà
Herbert Adamski
Ferenc Csik
Kurt Hasse
Gunnar Höckert
Kalle Jalkanen
Janusz Kusociński (in the Palmiry Masacre)
Wilhelm Leichum
Luz Long
Konrad Miersch
Toni Merckens
Hans Scheele
Hugo Strauß
Ludwig Stubbendorff
Gustav Wegner
Paul Wevers
Hans Woellke

This list does not include Endre Kabos who died doing forced labor and Konrad Freiherr von Wangenheim who may have committed suicide in 1953 while still a prisoner of war. It’s also very German heavy but I think that’s a reflection of the fact that this batch of cards is very German heavy.