Gerhard, Baron von Hessert

Gerhard, Baron Hessert and his teammates had no bobsleigh experience at all when they were called up as a last minute replacement after a series of bad crashes had left a number of German competitors in hospital. Nevertheless team Germany 2 entered the seventh place in the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid.

Baron Hessert attended the Technical University of Darmstadt and emigrated to New York City in 1929. In 1939 he married Cornelia Fitch Baekeland, the granddaughter of Leo Baekeland, the inventor of Bakelite.