A political issue
‘Jewish’ sport between integration and marginalisation

Specifically Jewish sports clubs began to appear around 1900, often in reaction to the exclusion of Jews from other sports clubs. On 11 March 1902, the JTV was founded as the first Jewish sports club in Cologne. Despite the at times overt anti-Semitism, ten years later most Jewish sportspeople still belonged to non-Jewish clubs. In the 1920s did Jewish clubs – many of them newly founded – gain importance as safe havens.

Despite a prohibition on the use of sports facilities and difficult training conditions, membership of Jewish clubs grew significantly in the 1930s, when Jews were banned from non-Jewish clubs. Instead of sports halls, offices now served as training facilities, and community centres as competition venues. In November 1938, the Jewish sports movement came to a halt. Not until some 20 years after the Shoah were Jewish sports clubs re-established in Germany – among them TuS Makkabi in Cologne in 1967, where Jewish and non-Jewish athletes train together today.