1. Helene Julie Mayer was a German-born fencer who won the gold medal at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, and the silver medal at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
15 Facts About Helene Mayer
1. 2.
Helene Mayer competed for Nazi Germany in Berlin, despite having been forced to leave Germany in 1935 and resettle in the United States because she was of Jewish descent.
3.
Helene Mayer studied at American universities, and later returned to Germany in 1952 where she died of breast cancer.
4.
Helene Mayer received citizenship in 1941 but returned to Germany in 1952.
5.
Helene Mayer's mother lda Anna Bertha was Lutheran, and her father Ludwig Karl Mayer, a physician, was Jewish and was born in 1876.
6.
Emmanuel Helene Mayer, her paternal great-grandfather, and Jule Weissman, his wife, were the parents of Martin Helene Mayer, her paternal grandfather who was born in 1841 and who married Rosalie Hamburg, her paternal grandmother.
7.
Helene Mayer was only 13 when she won the German women's foil championship in 1924.
8.
Helene Mayer won a gold medal in fencing at the age of 17 at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, representing Germany, winning 18 bouts and losing only 2.
9.
Helene Mayer finished fifth at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, having learned, two hours prior to the match, that her boyfriend had died in a military training exercise in Germany.
10.
Helene Mayer then remained in the US to study for two years as an exchange student at Scripps College, earning a certificate in social work in 1934.
11.
Helene Mayer was stripped of her citizenship in Germany in 1935 by the Nuremberg Laws, which considered her non-German.
12.
Helene Mayer accepted an invitation to compete for Germany at the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin.
13.
Helene Mayer was the European champion in 1929 and 1931.
14.
In 1952, Helene Mayer returned to Germany, where she married an old friend, Erwin Falkner von Sonnenburg, in a quiet May ceremony in Munich.
15.
Helene Mayer was inducted into the USFA Hall of Fame in 1963.