In the Olympiastadion in Berlin, 100,000 people hold their breath. A forest of raised arms greeted the man who now sits in the officials’ box, the embodiment of revanchist Germany. Adolf Hitler, straight as an I, sees the whole world parade during the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympic Games, on 1er August 1936. The important thing is to participate? Not for the German Chancellor, who wrote in 1924 in My Kampf: “Millions of bodies trained in sports, imbued with love for the homeland and filled with offensive spirit could transform into an army within two years.”
In fact, the Berlin Olympic edition goes far beyond the framework of sport: it is a war that is played out with medals, trophies, shattered records. Every feat of an athlete of the Third Reich will add to the glory of the Aryan race. Among those parading on the track of the Olympic stadium, a certain Dora Ratjen, who defends the colors of Germany in the women’s high jump. She was preferred to Gretel Bergmann, of Jewish faith.
Chocolate in Berlin, a record in Vienna
According to her teammates, Dora Ratjen is an enigma. His square jaw, his deep voice, his unhealthy shyness amaze those who share his daily life. “In the shared shower, we wondered why she never showed herself naked”Gretel Bergmann would later confess. Despite everything, his training partners suspect nothing. Everyone is focused on their own performance.
That of Dora Ratjen, then aged 17, also proved disappointing. During the high jump final, on August 9, 1936, she failed to reach the podium in fourth place with a mark of 1.58 meters. She is ahead of her compatriot Elfriede Kaun (in bronze), but above all by the Hungarian Ibolya Csák, one of the rare Jewish athletes to win Olympic gold in Berlin.
After two weeks of competitions until August 16, 1936, the Führer rubbed his hands: with 101 medals including 38 titles, it was Nazi Germany which dominated the medal table head and shoulders. For her part, having left Berlin disappointed, Dora Ratjen continues to train.
Two years later, the 19-year-old obtained the long-awaited entry into the European Athletics Championships, the women’s events taking place in Vienna, Austria. “Miss Dora Ratjen passes 1.70 m and breaks the world record in high jump”briefly congratulates the newspaper Le Petit Parisien, in the sports pages of its edition of September 19, 1938, praising a “sensational feat”while “the old record was 1.65 m”. Finally, the German athlete gets her revenge.
“My parents raised me as a girl”
With her continental gold medal in her suitcases, the high jumper takes her place on board a train linking Vienna to Cologne, when a passenger reports that a man disguised as a woman is on board… However, anyone suspected of transvestism is liable to a one-way ticket to a detention camp. Arrested by the police in Magdeburg, Dora Ratjen must explain herself. “My parents raised me as a girl”admits the German athlete, who also admits to being a man. A medical check will reveal that she has sexual organs “ambiguous”.
Two weeks later, on October 4, 1938, the French daily which praised him had to protest: “Following a medical examination, (Dora Ratjen) has just been recognized as male. Consequently, his record will not be approved…” With unexpected kindness, Le Petit Journal added on October 5, 1938: “A man cannot claim to participate – even if he must triumph – in competitions reserved for the weaker sex. Which doesn’t mean that Dora Ratjen won’t one day become an excellent athlete.”
A trial was immediately opened in Germany, but it quickly exonerated Dora Ratjen, who obtained no financial benefit from the episode. It was therefore not an imposture: everything suggests that they were in the dark regarding their gender identity. Born at home, attending a single-sex school and women’s sports clubs, the intersex athlete will discover male sexual organs at puberty (the anatomical confusion noted by doctors suggests a hermaphroditic character). From then on, the shame she felt was enough to dissuade her from talking about it.
From Dora to Heinrich Ratjen
We do not know what the reaction of the Ministry of Sports of the Third Reich was. Was Adolf Hitler, in his crusade against “deviants,” horrified to know that a German intersex athlete had been applauded at the 1936 Olympics? In any case, the official report of the investigation tried to minimize the affair and to cancel the world record established in Vienna. Despite certain rumors which appear unfounded, there is nothing to suggest that the Third Reich would have been aware of the “true nature” of Dora Ratjen and would have knowingly pushed her to the front of the stage in order to win more medals or to block the path of the Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann in 1936.
Quickly eclipsed by the Second World War, this controversy did not yet justify the tests of femininity undertaken on the sidelines of major sporting competitions. The task of verifying the gender of athletes emerged in the 1960s, in the tense context of the Cold War where American-Soviet rivalry raised all sorts of suspicions. Used for the first time in 1966, these tests however proved to be intrusive and their reliability was questioned. The controversy is still alive today as the International Olympic Committee (IOC) considers the exclusion of trans athletes from the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028.
And Dora Ratjen in all this? They changed their name in March 1939, borrowing that of their father, Heinrich. “Today she became Private Heinrich Ratjen, of a Dresden infantry regimentreported a journalist from Paris-Soir, February 16, 1940. And, after two months of instruction, putting aside his memories of a female athlete, Heinrich Ratjen will join the fortified works of the Siegfried Line. His comrades will no doubt be unaware of his former exploits and also… his former gender.” Having left sporting competition for good, Heinrich Ratjen retires to Bremen. As for the women’s world record in the high jump, finally invalidated and falling to 1.65 meters (previously established by two American athletes in August 1932), it was finally improved by one centimeter in May 1939 by the British Dorothy Odam, silver medalist in Berlin three years earlier.
