An Unlikely Friendship: Jesse Owens (Gold medal winning American track star) and Lutz Long (German Olympian, Nazi soldier) History is messy. Looking back it is easy to judge and dismiss individuals based on labels and affiliations. You’d probably be surprised to find that a German track star at the Berlin Olympics became friends with African American track star Jesse Owens despite the presence of angry, racist leader Adolf Hitler at the games.
Long publicly embraced Owens while American President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t send him a congratulatory telegram after his impressive wins.
Excerpt:
“It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler,” Owens later said in an interview. “You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace.”
After besting Long and taking home gold in the long jump, Owens was famously photographed saluting the American flag. Long stood behind him, offering the Nazi salute.
The two remained friends, keeping in contact as much of world plunged into war. Long was stationed with the German Army in North Africa before being killed in action on July 14, 1943, during the Allied invasion of Sicily. In his last letter to Owens, Long, seemingly aware of his impending fate wrote, “My heart tells me, if I be honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is a something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war done, someday find my Karl [Kai], and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we not separated by war. I am saying—tell him how things can be between men on this earth.”
In 1951 Owens traveled to Germany to meet Long’s then 10-year-old son, Kai, fulfilling his promise to indeed tell the young boy how things could be. Owens eventually served as best man at Kai’s wedding, and the two families remain in contact to this day.”
Read the letter in the article. It is powerful. They were men of their times but didn’t let that keep them from being friends. If they could figure it out, we should be able to do the same.