Gottfried Von Cramm

Gottfried Von Cramm

Gottfried Alexander Maximilian Walter Kurt Freiherr von Cramm (English: Baron Gottfried von Cramm; 7 July 1909, Nettlingen – 8 November 1976), was a German amateur era tennis champion and twice French Open champion.

The Nazis wanted to exploit his blonde good looks as a symbol of Aryan supremacy, but he refused to identify with Nazism. Probably in revenge, they jailed him for an earlier homosexual relationship with a Jewish actor, and this damaged his career abroad. However, a more probable reason for his imprisonment was because of his losing streak in international tennis; he had lost in the 1937 Davis Cup deciding match to the American Don Budge and Germany did not continue to the finals. In the war, he was discharged from the military because of frostbite.

He figured briefly in the gossip-columns as the sixth husband of Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress.