(Seelig later resumed his boxing career in the United States.) Another Jewish athlete, Daniel Prenn-Germany's top-ranked tennis player-was removed from Germany's Davis Cup Team.
BOYCOTT ADVANCE CONTROLS PROFESSIONAL
The German Boxing Association expelled professional light heavyweight champion Erich Seelig in April 1933 because he was Jewish. "Non-Aryans"-Jews or individuals with Jewish parents and Roma (Gypsies)-were systematically excluded from German sports facilities and associations. In April 1933, an "Aryans only" policy was instituted in all German athletic organizations. Such imagery also reflected the importance the Nazi regime placed on physical fitness, a prerequisite for military service. In sculpture and in other forms, German artists idealized athletes' well-developed muscle tone and heroic strength and accentuated ostensibly Aryan facial features. German sports imagery of the 1930s served to promote the myth of “Aryan” racial superiority and physical prowess. The Nazi claim to control all aspects of German life also extended to sports. Two years later, Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany and quickly turned the nation's fragile democracy into a one-party dictatorship that persecuted Jews, Roma (Gypsies), all political opponents, and others. The choice signaled Germany's return to the world community after its isolation in the aftermath of defeat in World War I. In 1931, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin. With the conclusion of the Games, Germany's expansionist policies and the persecution of Jews and other "enemies of the state" accelerated, culminating in World War II and the Holocaust. Having rejected a proposed boycott of the 1936 Olympics, the sponsoring athletic and Olympic organizations of the United States and other western democracies missed the opportunity to take a stand that-some observers at the time claimed-might have given Hitler pause and bolstered international resistance to Nazi tyranny. Softpedaling its antisemitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany. For two weeks in August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist, militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympics.
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