Maximilian Adolph Schmeling

Born: 1905 | Died: 2005

Boxer/World Champion

Maximillian Adolph Otto Siegfried Schmeling was born in Klein Luckow in the Province of Pomerania. The German boxer and heavyweight champion is remembered in Germany and the USA for his two fights against the American heavyweight champion Joe Louis.

Schmeling debuted as a boxer in 1924. He became the only boxer to ever win the Heavyweight world championship by disqualification in 1930, after US-boxer Jack Sharkey was disqualified for an unfair blow. In 1936, three years after the National Socialist regime had come into power in Germany, Schmeling first faced Joe Louis. He won this fight against the, until then, undefeated American and returned to Germany as a hero. Louis would go on to win the Heavyweight crown in 1937, but he commented that he would not feel like a champion until he had defeated Schmeling in a rematch. In June of 1938 with World War II on the horizon Schmeling and Louis faced off at Yankee Stadium. Louis won this historical rematch. The two fighters shared mutual respect and became friends. In 1981 Schmeling was one of the pallbearers at Joe Louis’s funeral.

In 1939 with the beginning of World War II, he was drafted into the German Wehrmacht as a paratrooper. In later years it was revealed that Schmeling had sheltered two Jewish boys in his Berlin apartment during the Night of the Broken Glass Progrom of November 9 – 10, 1938.

Schmeling officially retired from boxing in 1948 and became one of the owners of the German branch of Coca Cola. Schmeling died in 2005 in Hamburg. He is a member of the International Boxing Hall Of Fame with a record of 56 wins, 10 losses and 4 draws. Schmeling was voted “Athlete of the Century” by German sports journalists, together with Steffi Graf.

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