As we prepare to be inundated with the strawberries and cream Instagram stories of Wimbledon, did you know the tennis tournament has a poignant place in gay history?

Although you may be more familiar with the sport’s trailblazing gay Grand Slam champions Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova, Gottfried von Cramm had a hugely successful career in the 30s despite coming up against the Nazi regime and being imprisoned for his sexuality. 

The German tennis star ranked number two in the world in 1934 and 1936, and topped the rankings in 1937.

Von Cramm won the French Championships – now called the French Open – twice, becoming the first man not from the US, Great Britain, Australia or France to win a singles Grand Slam title, in France in 1934. He reached the final of a Grand Slam singles tournament five other times and was runner-up at Wimbledon in 1935 and 1936 – losing to British legend Fred Perry on both occasions – and again in 1937.

In 1977, he was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, being “most-remembered for a gallant effort in defeat against [American Don] Budge in the 1937 Interzone Final at Wimbledon”.

He won the Wimbledon mixed doubles title with German-Danish star Hilde Krahwinkel in 1933, the same year the Nazis came to power in his homeland.

Was Gottfried von Cramm gay?

Homosexuality was illegal in Germany under Paragraph 175 of the criminal code, so von Cramm had to hide his sexuality.

Having been arrested, and despite being married to Baroness Elisabeth Lisa von Dobeneck at the time, he admitted having a three-year relationship with Manasse Herbst, a male Jewish actor and opera singer in his twenties.

Van Cramm and von Dobeneck were divorced in 1937 and he married Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton in 1955 but the marriage only lasted four years.

Gottfried Von Cramm and the Nazi regime

He was additionally charged with sending money to Herbst, who had moved to what was then Palestine. 

In 1938, he was sentenced to one year in jail but released after six months, partly in the face of public pressure – including a letter sent by his tennis rival Budge to Adolf Hitler.

Von Cramm returned to the international tennis circuit and competed at the Queen’s Club Championships in London. However, Wimbledon reportedly refused to let him play, using the excuse that he was a convicted criminal, and therefore unfit.

After the outbreak of the World War II, Von Cramm was conscripted into military service but was dismissed in 1942 because of his criminal record.

He refused to identify with Nazism, despite the regime trying to make him a pin-up for Aryan supremacy. Instead, he joined the active resistance to Hitler and used his international travels as a tennis coach in Sweden to pass messages to the officers involved in Operation Valkyrie, the failed July 1944 bomb plot to assassinate Hitler.

Although the war and his imprisonment stole years from Von Cramm’s tennis career, he continued to have success. He retired in 1952 and was tragically killed in a car crash in Egypt in 1976, aged 67.

He was honoured with the Silver Laurel Leaf, Germany’s highest sporting award, and was the subject of a Radio 4 play in 2011 and Playing to Survive, a documentary made last year.

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