Werner Seelenbinder

Greco-Roman light-heavyweight wrestler Werner Seelenbinder finished an fourth at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, after being handicapped by injury. He won German titles in 1933, 1935-38 and 1940 and in 1937 and 1938 he finished third on each occasion at the European Championships.

Seelenbinder was unemployed for long periods and had casual work after leaving school. He began studying the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and was expelled from his club in 1928 because he favored Communism. He represented Germany in the first Spartakiad in Moscow in 1928 after which he joined the KPD Communist Party of Germany. After the nationwide banning of the workers’ sports clubs in 1933, he was arrested, for a second time, but was again released.

He then refused the Hitler salute at the German Championships in the same year and was banned for 18 months. He wanted to repeat his stance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but because if injury, he failed to get onto the podium. In 1942, he was arrested as a member of a Communist resistance force, dragged through seven prisons and concentration camps, tortured and eventually sentenced to death. In October 1944 he was executed by beheading in Brandenburg Prison.

Seelenbinder received numerous awards posthumously. In 1950 the Werner-Seelenbinder-Hall was officially inaugurated in East Berlin. Mostly in East Germany several schools, streets and sport facilities were named after him. The East German Honorable Medal Master of Sports and Elder Master of Sports (1954-89) portrayed Seelenbinder on the obverse. In 1963 the East German Post published a stamp with his portrait. In 2008 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Sport.