A Most Curious Friendship
If called upon to do so, how might you characterize the Nazis? Bloodthirsty, racist, megalomaniacal and repugnant spring to mind. After all, Adolf Hitler was personally responsible for starting a war that ultimately claimed more than 50 million lives.
The Nazis were, in general, also terribly insecure. When you claim to be supermen whose destiny it is to rule over the entire planet, at some point, you’re going to be expected to prove that. In 1936, the Summer Olympics were held in Berlin. This was to be Hitler’s chance to show the world how awesome he was.
Jesse Owens was a groundbreaking luminary in
track and field. Source: Public domain.
Reality Can Be a Bitter Pill …
In 1913, James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens screamed into the world in Oakville, Ala. He was the youngest of ten children born to sharecropper Henry Cleveland Owens and Mary Emma Fitzgerald. His grandfather was a slave.
When Owens was 9 years old, his family moved to Cleveland to escape the segregated South. To his family, the young man was “JC.” His new Ohio school teacher misinterpreted “JC” due to the kid’s pronounced southern drawl and recorded his name as “Jesse” in the roll book. That appellation followed him to his grave.
When Jesse was in junior high school, he worked every afternoon to help support his family. His track coach, Charles Riley, recognized the boy’s gift and arranged to let him practice early in the morning. Owens set the world record for the 100-yard dash before he finished high school. He subsequently attended The Ohio State University where he was known as the “Buckeye Bullet.”
In 1935, Owens set four different world records in track and field over the course of 45 minutes. Nobody else has even come close. Such rarefied performance secured him a slot on the U.S. Olympic team.
Jesse Owens, shown here being awarded the gold in the long jump,
developed an unlikely friendship with Lutz Long, the German competitor
who took the no. 2 spot. Source: Bundesarchiv/National Archives of Germany
Put Up or Shut Up
With Adolf Hitler in attendance, Jesse Owens proceeded to mop the floor with his German competitors. He ended the Olympics with four gold medals, a feat that would not be equaled until Carl Lewis took gold in the same events in 1984. Hitler was purportedly livid.
Albert Speer later described Hitler’s dour mood thusly, “He was highly annoyed by the series of triumphs by the marvelous colored American runner, Jesse Owens. People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive, Hitler said with a shrug; their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future games.” Master race, indeed …
The German competitor Owens bested in the long jump was an Aryan superman named Carl Ludwig “Lutz” Long. Long took the silver to Owens’ gold. However, instead of storming off in disgust, as did der Fuhrer, Long immediately embraced the young black American and congratulated him warmly for his victory. There, before the eyes of the entire world, was born a most remarkable friendship.
The deep friendship between champions Jesse Owens and Lutz Long began at the 1936 Olympic games. Source: Public domain.
Lutz Long and Jesse Owens remained friends until the German star
was killed in action in Sicily. Source: Cleveland Memory Project,
Cleveland State University Special Collections
Transcending Competition
Long and Owens maintained that friendship after the games were complete, exchanging letters regularly even as their two nations tooled up for war. They shared with each other the details of their families, their concerns for the present and their plans for the future. Of their deep and abiding friendship, Owens would later write, “It took a lot of courage for Lutz to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have, and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace.”
As did all able-bodied German males, Lutz Long eventually went to war, serving with the Afrika Korps. Despite open combat between their nations, the two men still exchanged regular correspondence. While in North Africa, Lutz penned his final missive to his friend. Here is an excerpt. Keep in mind that Long’s native language was German.
—
“I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not fear so much for myself, my friend Jesse, I fear for my woman who is home, and my young son Karl, who has never really known his father.
My heart tells me, if I am honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war is done, someday find my Karl, and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we were not separated by war. I am saying — tell him how things can be between men on this earth.
If you do this something for me, this thing that I need the most to know will be done, I do something for you, now. I tell you something I know you want to hear. And it is true.
That hour in Berlin when I first spoke to you, when you had your knee upon the ground, I knew that you were in prayer.
Then I not know how I know. Now I do. I know it is never by chance that we come together. I come to you that hour in 1936 for purpose more than der Berliner Olympiade.
And you, I believe, will read this letter, while it should not be possible to reach you ever, for purpose more even than our friendship.
I believe this shall come about because I think now that God will make it come about. This is what I have to tell you, Jesse.
I think I might believe in God. And I pray to him that, even while it should not be possible for this to reach you ever, these words I write will still be read by you.
Your brother, Lutz
—
Lutz Long was transferred to Sicily where he was subsequently killed in action. His friend Jesse Owens would not discover the details until much later. In 1951, Owens traveled to Germany in search of 10-year-old Karl Long, now an orphan after having lost his mother to the war as well. Ten years after that, Jesse Owens served as best man at Karl’s wedding. Owens maintained a fatherly relationship with Karl until the Olympian died in 1980.
Ruminations
These days, one might be forgiven for believing the world is utterly bereft of hope. Everybody hates everybody, and that gets worse daily. In the poignant story of the friendship between international track stars Jesse Owens and Lutz Long, we see personified light in the darkest of spaces. If these two utterly disparate men under such desperate circumstances could pull it off, perhaps there is hope for us as well.
