Death of a Decent Man

Highlights from German Boxing Legend Max Schmeling Dies:

Max Schmeling, the heavyweight champion whose two fights with Joe Louis set off a propaganda war between the Nazi regime and the United States on the eve of World War II, died at 99....

Despite the picture of him in the United States as a tool of the Nazis, Schmeling had run-ins with the regime even before the first Louis fight.

Although he had lunched with Hitler and had long discussions with his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Schmeling angered the Nazi bosses in 1935 by refusing to join the Nazi party, fire his Jewish-American manager, Joe Jacobs, and divorce Ondra, a Czech-born film star.

During the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Schmeling extracted a promise from Hitler that all U.S. athletes would be protected. He hid two Jewish boys in his Berlin apartment during Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) in 1938, when the Nazis burned books in a central square and rampaged through the city, setting synagogues on fire. He reportedly used his influence to save Jewish friends from concentration camps....

In his final years, Schmeling spent three or four hours a day watching television in his home in Hollenstedt. He remained married to Ondra for 54 years until she died in 1987. The two, who met on the set of a film in which Schmeling appeared, married in 1932. The couple had no children.

"I had a happy marriage and a nice wife," Schmeling said in 1985. "I accomplished everything you can. What more can you want?"

Rest in peace.