top of page

Maccabi in Germany

 

The history of Jewish sport post-1945.

 

A few days after Germany and Israel established diplomatic relations for the first time in 1965, the Jewish sports movement was founded in Germany: on 23 May 1965. The first Jewish sports club in Germany had been set up in Berlin in 1898, and shortly after the turn of the century further clubs joined together to form an umbrella association. For decades, Berlin remained at the heart of Jewish sport, until with the 1938 pogrom the Nazis destroyed that side to Jewish life, too. Aside from a brief revival of the Jewish sports movement in the post-War period, it was not until 20 years after the Holocaust that athletes were to come together under the Star of David in Germany, the country of the Nazis.

This was largely the work of sports fan Max Loewy. Born in Katowice in 1905, Loewy captained his school sports club even as a teenager, and shortly afterwards became a member of the Jewish club Bar Kochba. After studying Physical Education he headed the Maccabi Düsseldorf sports club in the years of the Weimar Republic, and in 1935 organized the German team’s participation in the second Maccabiah Games – the Jewish Olympics – in what was then Palestine. Fleeing from the Nazis, he ultimately managed to escape to Tel Aviv with his wife Lotte – a swimmer from the long-standing Viennese club Hakoah. In 1957, Loewy returned to Germany and re-established Maccabi Düsseldorf.

 

It was also Loewy who invited functionaries from Jewish communities and sports clubs to Düsseldorf in 1965 to revive the German Jewish gymnastics and sports association Turn- und Sportverband Makkabi (spelt with “kk”, unlike “Maccabi Düsseldorf”). The Jewish communities with their 30,000 members had sent their top representatives to attend the association’s revival. In a speech Heinz Galinski, long-time chairman of Berlin’s Jewish community, called on his fellow Jews to promote sport, as it was the best means for educating the young. Sport was able to make a contribution to the future of Judaism in Germany, he said, and help young people make contacts throughout Europe. As no-one at the meeting objected, a unique umbrella association was established in Germany that had only a single member club: Maccabi Düsseldorf. From the state capital on the Rhine, Loewy gradually created a national and international network intended to support the founding of a German-Jewish Sports Federation. Willi Daume, President of the German Sports Federation and of the West German National Olympic Committee, and Fred Worms, president of the European representation of the Maccabi World Union, both followed Loewy’s call. The experiment, first to set up the association and then individual clubs, was a success. That same year Maccabi groups were established in Munich and Frankfurt, and Loewy managed to secure the Maccabi World Union’s recognition of the German association in a crucial vote even in Israel. The public breakthrough then came at the eighth Maccabiah Games in 1969, when the first German team since 1935 took part in the international competition, with financial support from the Federal Ministry of the Interior. 

 

For the Maccabi World Union, the German association, as legal successor to the German ‘Makkabikreis’, assumed the central role in negotiations on “making amends” for the crimes committed against Jewish clubs during the Nazi period. In July 1970 West Germany finally pledged compensation in the “Restitution case of the ‘Makkabi’ Jüdischer Turn- und Sportverband in Deutschland e.V. and the German Reich” to the tune of 2,500,000 deutschmarks, which was shared between the Maccabi World Union and Makkabi Deutschland.

Shortly afterwards, Loewy already had as many as 11 clubs with 1,300 members registered. Then as now, fostering a Jewish identity was at the centre of the work of the Maccabi organisations, but at the same time the clubs were open to Christians and people of other confessions. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Jews poured out of Russia and its former satellite states into German municipalities, a fact that also enriched the local sporting life. Today, 3,000 sportsmen and women are organized in more than 30 Jewish clubs, and Maccabi is the largest Jewish youth association in Germany. Thus the hope of its founding fathers has been realized. 

 

The highlight of the association’s history to date is to take place in its jubilee year: For the first time, the continental umbrella association awarded the European Maccabi Games to Germany. Given the anti-Semitic violence last year the young Maccabi generation sees these games as a sign of the strength and self-confidence of German Jewry. Loewy died in 1981, and some credit must also go to him when German President Joachim Gauck, as patron of the European Maccabi Games, celebrates the Maccabi movement according to Jewish custom together with the approx. 2,000 athletes expected in Berlin on 28 July 2015: “Maccabi chai!”

Robin Streppelhoff

Partner

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

This is the archived content of official bilateral website that was founded by the German and Israeli government on the occasion of the Jubilee Year 2015. This website contains the articles of the bilateral website, but will be static and will not be maintained. It serves as documentation of the multi-faceted cooperation between Germany and Israel We hope you enjoy exploring 50 years of German-Israeli relations!

bottom of page