NS-Diktatur – Nazi Dictatorship

Badeverbot in Tübingen – swimming ban in Tübingen

In 1932 1933, city councillor Friedrich Eppensteiner criticised the conditions in Tübingen’s Neckar outdoor pool. The bathing and playing of scantily clad young women and men together represented an erotic ‘danger’. However, the local council refused to separate the sexes again. Instead, in May 1933, the NSDAP enforced a ban on ‘Jews and foreigners’ from entering the outdoor pool. This caused quite a stir. The plough factory ‘Gebrüder Eberhardt’ in Ulm wrote to mayor Adolf Scheef that their Jewish business partners in South Africa had complained about an alleged ban on swimming in Tübingen. The mayor was asked to counter this ‘lie’. Scheef had to confirm the ban and justified it by saying that he wanted to protect German women from ‘foreign-raced’ bathers.

Memorandum by Friedrich Eppensteiner on the Tübingen open-air swimming pool system, 10 May 1933
Tübingen city archives

Letter from the Eberhardt plough factory to the Mayor of Tübingen, 11 August 1933
Tübingen City Archives

Letter from the Mayor of Tübingen to the Eberhardt plough factory, 14 August 1933
Tübingen city archives

Jüdische Gäste im Familienbad Herweck – Jewish guests at the Herweck family baths

In the summer of 1934, the Mannheim lawyer Jakob Löb-Mathieu filmed his daughter Irene bathing with friends in the Herweck family baths. It was a wooden construction anchored in the river with a ‘Freischwimmer basin’ open to the river at the bottom and a non-swimmer pool closed off at the bottom by wooden grating. The operators refused to exclude Jewish guests like the Löb-Mathieus. The SA therefore forced its way into the baths on 27 June 1935 and forcibly expelled people who were thought to be Jews. The inflammatory publication ‘Der Stürmer’ celebrated the brutal action. The Löb-Mathieu family had already emigrated to France on 9 August 1934, shortly after the seemingly idyllic film scenes were shot. They survived the Shoah there. Löb-Mathieu remained in France after 1945, while Irene moved to the Netherlands.

Film footage by Jakob Löb-Mathieu from the Herweck family baths, 1934
Marchivum, Mannheim

Irene Löb-Mathieu and her brother Gustave in the Herweck family baths, 1933
Saskia Bentem-Iburg

Irene Löb-Mathieu at the pool of the Herweck family baths, 1933
Saskia Bentem-Iburg

Irene Löb-Mathieu with friends in the Herweck family pool, 1933
Saskia Bentem-Iburg

Plan of the Herweck family baths, 1928

Marchivum, Mannheim

Aerial view of the Herweck family baths, 1930s

Marchivum, Mannheim

‘Der Stürmer’ no. 29, July 1935

Library of the Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen

Antisemitische Badeverbote – Anti-Semitic bathing bans

On 22 July 1935, the Stuttgart ‘NS-Kurier’ celebrated a ban on Jews bathing in the Cannstatt Mombachbad. All of Stuttgart’s open-air swimming pools were to follow this example. The first bathing bans for the Jewish population had been introduced in 1933, primarily in Bavarian cities, but also in Tübingen. In 1935, other cities such as Freiburg, Göppingen and Mannheim enacted these kinds of harassment measures. Baden-Baden did not follow suit until 1937, as consideration was given to the international visitors there for a long time.

Excerpt from the Stuttgart ‘NS-Kurier’, 22 July 1935
Federal Archives Berlin-Lichterfelde, R 36/2060, fol. 19

Badeverbot für jüdische Kinder – swimming ban for Jewish children

In Esslingen, the exclusion of the Jewish population from the municipal baths was demanded as early as 1935. Mayor Alfred Klaiber officially implemented this from 1937. Theodor Rothschild, the director of the Jewish orphanage ‘Wilhelmspflege’, was therefore no longer able to give his pupils swimming lessons. In June 1938, he humbly asked Klaiber to at least let the children go to the Neckar outdoor pool in the mornings. Klaiber refused the request. This was his decision: both the local NSDAP and the Ministry of Education had given him the option of allowing the children to attend. In November 1938, a mob organised by the party devastated the orphanage. At least 50 former pupils were later murdered. Rothschild died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1944.

On the night of 1 and 2 September 1935, the words ‘Jews not wanted’ were painted in red on the pavement and on the wall at the entrance to Merkel’s Stadtbad.’
Mayor Alfred Klaiber, 3rd of September 1935

Swimming lessons are to be given everywhere in schools […].  In the case of Jewish pupils, this also depends on whether the community in question allows them to use its baths. I may leave the decision […] to the Mayor of the City of Esslingen.’
Minister of Culture Christian Mergenthaler, 4th of July 1938

Letter from Theodor Rothschild to Lord Mayor Alfred Klaiber, 23 June 1938
Esslingen city archives

Letter from Alfred Klaiber to Theodor Rothschild, 8 July 1938
Esslingen city archives

The children of the ‘Israelitischen Waisenhauses Wilhelmspflege’, 1930s
Esslingen city archives

Nordheim baut sein Freibad – Nordheim builds its outdoor pool

In 1939, the people of Nordheim near Heilbronn built an open-air swimming pool with their own hands. This voluntary work was necessary because no construction workers were allowed to be removed from the ‘Westwall’ fortifications. Council employees went from house to house with lists asking people who were willing to help to sign up. Only 15 men who where able to work refused and were therefore put under pressure by the mayor. A mere four refused to take part. The ground-breaking ceremony took place on 20 April, Hitler’s birthday. The people of Nordheim excavated 3000 cubic metres of earth without an excavator. Women were mainly involved in the painstaking painting of the pool. The pool was completed at the end of August, just before many men were called up for the war. The outdoor pool was officially opened in 1940.

Participation list for the Nordheim outdoor pool construction, 1939
Nordheim municipal archive

Draft letter from Mayor Karl Wagner to the 15 objectors, 14 April 1939
Nordheim municipal archives

Clearing work for the construction of the Nordheim outdoor pool, April 1939
Nordheim municipal archives

Ground-breaking ceremony for the Nordheim outdoor pool, 20 April 1939
Nordheim municipal archives

Earthworks for the Nordheim outdoor pool, 1939
Nordheim municipal archives

Work on the pool of the Nordheim open-air swimming pool, July/August 1939
Nordheim municipal archives

Painting the pool of the Nordheim open-air swimming pool, end of August 1939
Nordheim municipal archives

Children in the partially filled Nordheim outdoor pool, autumn 1939
Nordheim municipal archives

Swimming in the Nordheim outdoor pool, 1940s
Nordheim municipal archives

Schwimmbadverbote für „Ausländer“ – swimming pool bans for ‘foreigners’

During the Second World War, people from many parts of Europe had to perform forced labour in the German Reich. The men among them were accused of harassing German women in swimming pools. In 1942, the Ministry of the Interior recommended that they be ‘removed’ from swimming pools if necessary. In Esslingen, the NSDAP demanded different bathing times for ‘foreign nationals’ and Germans in 1943. Mayor Alfred Klaiber reintroduced gender segregation in the municipal indoor swimming pool instead. In 1943, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt deemed a blanket ban on swimming pools for ‘foreigners’ to be inadmissible. However, this only applied to people from Western Europe, Scandinavia and allied countries such as Italy or Bulgaria. People from Poland or the Soviet Union were generally prohibited from entering.

Letter from the Reich Ministry of the Interior to the state governments, 5 August 1942
Constance City Archives

Letter from the mayor of Esslingen to the NSDAP district women’s organisation leader, 3 March 1943
Esslingen city archives

Letter from the Reich Main Security Office to the Württemberg Minister of the Interior, 28 May 1943
Nordheim municipal archives

Schwimmunterricht in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus – swimming lessons under National Socialism

Swimming – excluding the Jewish population – was to become ‘common property of the German people’. This demand by the National Socialist Reich Association for Physical Exercise was primarily aimed at children and young people, most of whom were supposed to gain the relevant qualifications in school sports or swimming clubs. Proof of successful swimming lessons was provided in the form of a certificate for the ‘Freischwimmer’ or ‘Fahrtenschwimmer’ test at local swimming pools. Later, this ability was confirmed once again in a ‘Reichsschwimmschein’, which was signed by the ‘Obergebietsführer für die Leibeserziehung der deutschen Jugend’ and the ‘Führer’ of the local ‘Bann’. The two-piece swimming costume for women and the short swimming trunks for men first became established in swimming in the early 1930s. The focus was no longer so much on the naturalness and nudity of the Lebensreform movement, but rather on the athlete’s body, which was self-consciously flaunted during the Nazi era.

Certificates for Lotte Winkler’s open-water and competitive swimming test, 1937
City of Stuttgart, Betriebsmanagement Stuttgarter Bäder

Reich swimming licence for Lotte Winkler, 1942
City of Stuttgart, Betriebsmanagement Stuttgarter Bäder

Two-piece ladies‘ swimming costume, Benger Ribana company, around 1939
Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg

Men’s swimming trunks, Benger Ribana company, around 1939
Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg