Lighting the Flame

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Ever wonder about something or someone?  Some thing  or someone completely unrelated to your life?  For no good reason mind you.  You are simply struck by an urge to know more. Who was that?  What did he or she do?  How did they live?

Its happened to me before.  A number of years ago on my birthday I came across the original New York Times published on my birthday in 1942. My wife had bought it for a birthday years ago.

Alone with my thoughts I began reading through it and was urged to look up the names in the obituaries, the engagement of lovers, business promotions and stock market prices.  And a young boy sitting on a lamp post worshipping Adolph Hitler as he rode by.

You can read about it here:

My September Birthday – A Re-Post | toritto (wordpress.com)l

So while writing yesterday’s post about the coming Olympic games I was struck again by that curiosity.  At the end of the post I included a video from the Berlin 1938 games. It included scenes of marching fascists, Hitler and Jesse Owens, all to the Olympic Hymn playing in the background.  It was a propaganda piece made by  Leni Riefenstahl as part of her Olympia filmed during the games.

In any case it includes the entrance of the torch into the Olympic stadium in front of Adolph Hitler and a packed house.  The torch is carried by a young German athlete, no doubt specifically chosen for his grace.

Who was that guy?  Did he survive the war? What did he do with his life beside carry the torch?  Did he win any medals?

Toritto wants to know.

Google gave me his name.  Fritz Schilgen.  This was the guy chosen by Riefenstahl and Goebbels to carry the torch in front of the Nazi elite.

Schilgen was born on September 8, 1906  in Kronberg im Taunus, near Frankfurt, the second son of the principal of the Kronberger high school. After the First World War, he began his career as a middle- and long-distance runner.

. Schilgen finished in third place in the German Championships in 1929, 1931, and 1933 in the 1500-meter run, representing a local sports club.   He also won the silver medal in the 4 x 400 meter relay at the 1928 World University Games, and the bronze medal in the 5000 meter run at those games in 1930, while studying electrical engineering.   The stadium in which  he was running had a telecommunications system Schilgen himself had designed.

On 21 March 1936, he married Ursula Gerlach. They had five children: Walter, Regine, Sibylle, Michael and Horst.

Schilgen was chosen by the organizers of the torch relay through Berlin to the stadium as a “symbol of German sporting youth”^] and for his beautiful and graceful running style, as determined by the aesthetics commission.  Riefenstahl and Goebbels agreed.  He would carry the torch into the stadium.

His dramatic lighting of the flame in the Olympic Stadium is captured in Olympia,

And he wasn’t even competing in the Olympics.

After his engineering studies he moved to Berlin for a job at ‘Telefunken’ company. More than two dozen patents proved his work-related efficiency. At ‘Telefunken’ he initiated sports activities for the employees. He coached them until the war was over. At the end of April 1945 he was one of the last who abandoned Berlin.  After periods in Hamburg and Ulm he returned to his birthplace Kronberg in 1971.

When in 1972 the Olympic fire was returned to Germany for the second time, Fritz Schilgen accompanied the torch relay for the whole distance in a car. Willi Daume, chief of the 1972 Olympic Games, had asked him to do so. For ten years he had helped the German Sport Aid Foundation as a volunteer.

Sixty years later the man who had become a historic person for sport in 1936, was standing once again in the Olympic Stadium of Berlin: On April 15th 1996 he lit the Olympic fire again at an age of 90. Together with the former NOC President Walter Tröger he had left the airplane just 90 minutes earlier – accompanied by the Olympic fire. That was the 100 year celebration of the first Olympic Games of the new age, held in  Athens. All 23 cities of the Olympic Games were honored with the returning of the Olympic fire.

He didn’t reach 103 years old like his mother. Nevertheless Fritz Schilgen died at a biblical age, four days after his 99^th birthday, in his birthplace, Kronberg. He was was buried in a local cemetery. Leading German sport personalities attended to pay their last respect to Fritz Schilgen.

After all, the electrical engineer made Olympic history, even though he never participated in the Olympic Games.

Riefenstahl clip of Fritz Schilgen entering the stadium and lighting the torch.

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