When Tom Wolfe
Irked Hiller
II happened the last lime the Olym¬
pics were held in Germany, in IB!№.
f*i/ JANES MEEILW
(Curator of the Wolfe Collection.
Гаек
Memorial Library. Asheville)
This summer's Olympic Games in
Munich mark the first time they've
been held in Germany in 36 years. And
on that occasion — Berlin, 1936 —
North Carolina’s great novelist Thomas
Wolfe was there and witness to one of
the most dramatic of all Olympic sports
spectacles.
Tom Wolfe may actually have
played a role in the famous encounter
between Adolph Hitler and Jesse
Owens, when the German Fuhrer
snubbed the black American runner
who won four gold medals during the
games. At the least. Wolfe sat near
Hitler in the vast Berlin stadium and
his loud cheering for Jesse Owens
greatly annoyed the Nazi dictator.
Tom Wolfe’s presence at the Berlin
Olympics was just a part of his lifelong
fascination with sports. He especially
loved the major spectator sports —
baseball, football and boxing — and
often wrote of them very knowingly in
his books.
As a teenager in Asheville, lanky
Tom Wolfe attended the Asheville
Tourists’ games regularly. During his
Chapel Hill student days he rooted
hard for the Tar Heel teams. In later
years he knew the major league line¬
ups and batting averages by heart, and
sturdily supported the New York Yan¬
kees. To see the best of the world's ath¬
letes amid the color and pageantry of
the Olympics was an opportunity
sports-loving Tom Wolfe just couldn't
pass up.
At Home In Germany
Germany — and especially Berlin
— always held a strong attraction for
Tom. The German reading public im¬
mediately took to his first two novels.
Look Homeward. Angel and Of Time
and the River. In translation they sold
many thousands of copies. German
critics compared his powerful lyric
style to that of the great Teutonic poets.
And Tom, too, felt at home in Ger¬
many. Its landscape, culture, even its
cuisine pleased him greatly. The land
was in his blood, too, for the ancestors
of his father, W. O. Wolfe, had mi¬
grated from Germany to southern
Pennsylvania decades before the
American Revolution.
A trip to Berlin in 1935 had turned
out to be the most carefree time the
moody, volatile Wolfe had ever ex¬
perienced. He stayed at the U.S. Em¬
bassy as an honored guest. The Am¬
bassador. William E. Dodd, was a
native Tar Heel — born in Clayton in
1869 — and so was his wife, the for¬
mer Martha Johns of Auburn. Their
daughter. Martha, developed a crush
on Tom and the whole family enter¬
tained him lavishly. For three weeks
1’om was dazzled by a continual round
of parties, receptions and sightseeing.
After such a time, he was eager to get
Wolfe bod been on honored guett of Ambot»odor
Williom E. Dodd of the U. S. Emba»»y. Dodd
-о»
oho
о
Tor Heel, born in Clayton,
о»
wo» hi»
wile, the former Martho John», ol Auburn.
Е«с» о
sports Ion, Tom Wolfe couldn't po»i up
the opportunity of seeing the Olympics in Berlin
from the diplomatic bo«.
back to Berlin the next summer for the
Olympics.
All was not to be as carefree this
time, however. By 1936 Adolph Hit¬
ler's Nazi party had been in power for
three years and tightened its grip over
every sector of German life. Wolfe
soon noticed that the Olympics, too.
were not immune from politics in Hit¬
ler's New Germany.
••Something Ominous . .
Tom went to the games almost every
day those first two weeks of August.
1936. And while he marvelled at their
organization, color and splendor, he
also felt something else, for he wrote:
“There scented to be something omi¬
nous in it. I lie games were overshad¬
owed. and were no longer merely sport¬
ing competitions to which other nations
had sent their chosen teams. They be¬
came. day after day. an orderly and
overwhelming demonstration in which
the whole of Germany had been
schooled and disciplined."
Part of Hitler's plans for the New
Germany was a racial policy that
claimed non-Aryans were an inferior
breed. Black athletes, of course, were
the lowest of the low. 1 hus it was a
saddening jolt for Hiller when the U.S.
track and field team, numbering sev¬
eral blacks and paced by the fleet
Clevelander Jesse Owens, humbled
the well-trained German leant. Owens
became the hero of the 1936 Olympics
and his stunning performances — gold
THE STATE. September t. 1972
13
