It's my understanding that the Lutheran Church is very strong in the Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden and Norway. There is a large number of people living in Seattle who are of Scandinavian descent and, of those who go to church, most of them go to Lutheran churches. There is a historical association between being Scandinavian and being Lutheran, and it would appear to me that this is analogous to the association between certain portions of the Semitic peoples and Judaism, as is neatly and clearly explained by Mark Cohen above, 26 Apr 03 - 07:37 PM (Aloha, Mark!). I don't think either "Scandinavianism" or "Lutheranism," or the combination thereof, constitute a race. Not, at least, in any anthropology textbook I've ever seen.

In 1924, an thirteen-year-old German girl named Helene Mayer won the German national fencing championship. She went on to win a gold medal at the 1928 Olympics. She continued to pile up a mind-boggling stack of medals and trophies over the next several years. While in Los Angeles to compete in the 1932 Olympics, she got the word that her German citizenship had been rescinded and she had been expelled from the Offenbach Fencing Club in her home town. Why? Well, it seems this five-foot ten-inch tall, green-eyed young woman, with her blonde hair tied back in braids, who could wield a foil with devastating skill—this young woman who looked like the quintessential Aryan, the very picture of Brünhilde herself—was born of a Christian mother and a Jewish father, neither of whom practiced any religion at all. They went to neither church nor synagogue. Now an unhappy expatriate, forbidden to return to her family and friends back home, Helene decided to stay in the United States where she went to Mills College. She won the 1934 and 1935 U. S. Women's Foils Championships and could have fenced on the U.S. Olympic Team. But she regarded her loss of German citizenship as some stupid bureaucratic blunder, didn't realize what was really at stake, and wanted her citizenship back.

The 1936 Olympic Games were to be held in Berlin. Hitler was relying on the Olympic Games to demonstrate to the world the superiority of the "Aryan Race," so to insure the "purity" of his athletes, he banned all Jews from the German Olympic teams. This created a mild furor in several countries, including the United States. Jewish athletes and many others who were sympathetic threatened a boycott. This wouldn't look good for the smooth running of the Olympics, so Hitler took threat seriously. In an effort to forestall a boycott and an international black eye, he (through an intermediary) begged Helene Mayer to return to Germany and compete on the German fencing team rather than fence for the American team. As an inducement, he indicated that he would restore her German citizenship. She was to be the token Jew. At least, Hitler contented himself, she was only half Jewish.

She accepted. She fenced in the Olympics and, disappointingly, placed second, winning the silver medal. Ironically enough, Ilona Schacherer-Elek from Hungary, who won the gold, and Ellen Preis from Austria, who won the bronze, were both Jewish. Although Germany won most of the medals at this Olympics, it was not a clean sweep for the Aryans. In addition to "non-Aryans" winning the top three places in women's fencing, Jesse Owens, pretty obviously a non-Aryan, dominated the track and field events. Hitler was visibly pissed! At one point, he stalked out of the arena in disgust.

Helene realized that things had changed in Germany, so after the Olympics, she returned to the United States and applied for American citizenship. She taught fencing at Mills College and went on to win a total of eight U. S. Women's Foils Championships before she died at an early age of ovarian cancer.

Helene Mayer was vilified by many people for accepting Hitler's offer to return and compete for Germany in the 1936 Olympics. Monday morning quarterbacking says that this was a highly questionable choice on her part, but she was politically very naïve, and like many people who should have known better, didn't really understand what was going on in Germany at the time. All she wanted to do was earn her degree in social work and spend her free time pursuing the sport she loved.

I don't know what all of this proves or what point I'm really trying to make here, other than to give an example of the kind of incredible self-defeating stupidity that can be displayed by those who feel threatened by anyone who didn't come out of the same cookie-cutter they came out of. This can—and did—reach Holocaust proportions when it guides the actions of those afflicted with this moral flaw who somehow manage to attain political power.

In a way, Helene Mayer was lucky. She left Germany before it was too late. Whether or not she practiced any religion at all, the fact that she had "Jewish blood" (whatever that is) could have spelled her doom, as it did for so many others. If I fault Helene Mayer at all, it's for being politically naïve. A dangerous non-position in that era.

And in this.

Don Firth