When it goes up for auction this week, the medal that showed the hollowness of Nazi racial supremacy might bring in up to £900,000.
When he decided to organize the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and erected a stadium with a capacity of 100,000 for the event, Adolf Hitler sought to further his notions of Aryan supremacy.
But when African American world record holder Jesse Owens competed against German long jump champion Carl Ludwig “Luz” Long, the latter took home the gold.
Luz praised and hugged his competitor thereafter in front of Hitler before escorting him around the stadium and posing for photos.
Owens, who almost missed the final after two foul leaps, would subsequently attribute his success in reaching the next round to Long’s counsel.
Now that the German athlete’s silver medal is being auctioned off, the family treasure might bring in much to $1 million (£900,000).
The silver medal that Luz Long won in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, according to Austin Widger of SCP Auctions, which is handling the auction, “is very significant in what it signifies.”
Long effectively ended Jesse Owens’ chances of winning the gold medal when he advised him on how to get to the long jump final.
“At that very moment, he demonstrated how sports can bridge ethnic and racial barriers and bring individuals from quite different origins together.
Luz Long, who assisted an African American win the long jump gold, “become the most valiant sportsmen in Olympic history by going against all the Third Reich stood for.”
In reference to Luz, Owens subsequently said that the result must have drove Hitler “insane.”
It took a lot of bravery for him to become friends with me, he said.
All the awards and trophies I had wouldn’t compare to the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that very moment.
Hitler must have lost his mind as he saw us hug.
He was accurate.
Hitler was ‘extremely angered’ by the triumph of black Americans in the 1936 Olympics, according to Albert Speer, his favorite architect and closest friend.
And with four gold medals, Owens had the best performance of the competition.
After the Olympics, Long and Owens remained in contact for many more years, writing each other letters up until the German’s demise in 1943 during the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Luz, who knew he was dying, wrote in his last letter: “Go to Germany after this war is over, sometime locate my Karl, and tell him about his father.”
“Tell him, Jesse, about the moments before the conflict split us apart. Tell him how relationships between males can exist on this planet, is what I’m saying.
In order to prevent another foul, Luz had advised Owens to leap from a wider distance before he qualified. Owens achieved this in 1964 by traveling to Berlin and informing Karl of this suggestion.
Owens said, “He assisted me in measuring a foot behind the takeoff board.”
“And after that, I descended and struck between these two markings.” I was thus eligible.
Given that there is no indication of the two conversing until the competition ended in a contemporaneous report, it is probable that Owens was exaggerating a bit for his friend’s kid.
Furthermore, Owens was cited as stating in a 1965 interview: “Those things are what people want to hear, so you tell ’em.”
In any case, they really made an imprint on sports history.
Even during the 2009 IAAF World Championships in Berlin, the two families ran into one another.
After Karl, Julia’s father, died away at the age of 80, Luz’s daughter-in-law Ragna Long and his granddaughter Julia Kellner Long decided to sell the inheritance.
In order to highlight Luz’s collection, they committed the silver medal to this particular auction, along with a number of other Long family artifacts, according to Mr. Widger.
Smoker Owens passed away from lung cancer in 1980. He was 66.
Long, who was just 30 years old when he died, is buried in Sicily.