gottfried von cramm

Baron Gottfried von Cramm was born on July 7, 1908 in Nettlingen, Germany. At one point he was considered the # 1 tennis player in the world. He met Jewish actor Manasse Herbst at the El Dorado Club in Berlin and they became lovers for years. Years later, he was arrested and charged with being gay. He was sentenced to a year in prison. Gottfried continued to send money to Manasse after he escaped to Palestine. Manasse went back to Germany after the war to thank Gottfried for saving his life. 

Von Cramm was also married twice to a woman, but it is unclear to me if these were lavender marriages due to his upstanding place in society or not. A source states his second marriage to socialite/Woolworth's heiress Barbara Hutton was only to help her with depression and substance use, and both marriages ended in divorce. Gottfried bravely never supported the Nazis, even as Hermann Goering himself tried to persuade him to support the fascists. Gottfried used his position as a tennis coach to travel freely and pass secret messages to resistance members during the last few years of the war. He lived on the razor's edge, always under pressure but trying to do the right thing. He died in a car accident in Egypt on November 6, 1976.

Sources and Further Reading:

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/schicksal-zwischen-sport-sexualitaet-und-politik-100.html   https://legacyprojectchicago.org/person/gottfried-von-cramm

   "El Dorado – everything the Nazis hate". Netflix. 29 May 2023.