Werner Seelenbinder

Werner Seelenbinder (August 2, 1904 – October 24, 1944) was a German communist and wrestler.

Seelenbinder was born in Stettin (Szczecin), Pomerania, and became a wrestler after training as a joiner, and had connections to the young people's workers' movement from an early age. In 1928 and 1929 he won the "Spartakiade" in Moscow; over 200 German sportsmen were banned from the contest, but Seelenbinder, with his interest in Marxism, took part. His first trip to Moscow had already persuaded him to become a member of the German communist party, the KPD. In 1933 he refused to give the Hitler salute when receiving his medal at the German Boxing Championship, and was rewarded with a sixteen-month ban on training and sports events.German workers' sports clubs were soon banned by the Nazi party; at this point the KPD approached Seelenbinder, asking him to join one of the legal sports clubs, to train to get as much sporting success as possible, so he would be able to carry messages across Germany and into other countries. As one of the country's top sportsmen he had more freedom of movement and could travel abroad. As well as preparing for the Olympics, Seelenbinder joined a secret, illegal resistance society, the Uhrig group, named after Robert Uhrig.

As a committed communist Seelenbinder was appalled by the 1936 Olympic Games that were to be held in Nazi Germany. He had originally planned to boycott it, but friends persuaded him to compete anyway, win, and defy the Nazis by not giving the required "Heil Hitler!" salute, but to use a vulgar gesture instead. This plan was foiled when he lost the first match. He eventually came fourth in the event.

The Nazi party had only allowed Seelenbinder to take part in the Olympics because they thought he would secure them a medal: otherwise, they did not trust him in the slightest. Seelenbinder's illegal activities as a courier and his participation in the Uhrig group had caught their attention: he was arrested, along with 65 other members of the group, on 4 February 1942 and after being sentenced to death by the "Volksgerichtshof", he was executed on October 24 1944, in Brandenburg prison, for supposed treason. The imprisonment had left him a wreck: his weight had dropped from 90 to 60 kilograms.

His farewell letter:

:"The time has now come for me to say goodbye. In the time of my imprisonment I must have gone through every type of torture a man can possibly endure. Ill health and physical and mental agony, I have been spared nothing. I would have liked to have experienced the delights and comforts of life, which I now appreciate twice as much, with you all, with my friends and fellow sportsmen, after the war. The times I had with you were great, and I lived on them during my incarceration, and wished back that wonderful time. Sadly fate has now decided differently, after a long time of suffering. But I know that I have found a place in all your hearts and in the hearts of many sports followers, a place where I will always hold my ground. This knowledge makes me proud and strong and will not let me be weak in my last moments."

On 29 July 1945 an urn containing Seelenbinder's ashes was buried at the site of his old club, the Berolina 03 Sports Club stadium in Berlin. At the same time, the stadium itself was named "Werner-Seelenbinder-Kampfbahn", but as Communism became a bad word in West Berlin, it was renamed "Stadion Neukölln" in 1949. A number of schools, streets and sporting facilities in the former East Germany were named after him. The Werner Seelenbinder Boxing Tournament is still (2004) held once a year in Berlin. However, the lack of impartiality by both the anti-communist West Germans and the pro-communist East Germans, who raised Werner Seelenbinder to the status of an icon, means that today his historical importance is rather controversial. In an article in the socialist German newspaper "Neues Deutschland" of August 2 2004, the director of the Berlin Sports Museum Martina Behrendt said that his role in the resistance movement had been exaggerated in the GDR, and that there were no reliable biographies.

On 2 August 2004 a commemorative speech was held in front of the Neukölln stadium, where Seelenbinder's ashes were buried, by the German socialist PDS party, one hundred years after Seelenbinder's birth. Party members spoke of their regret that the stadium had been renamed. Others mentioned with sadness the renaming of the eastern German "Werner-Seelenbinder-Halle" as "Velodrom im Europasportpark" in 1990 and the renaming of the "Werner-Seelenbinder-Turm" in Leipzig as the "Glockenturm".

On 24 October 2004, the 60th anniversary of Seelenbinder's death, the Neukölln stadium was once again renamed in his memory: "Werner-Seelenbinder-Stadion".