Helene Mayer

Mayer was born in Offenbach am Main, a city close to Frankfurt. Her mother lda Anna Bertha (née Becker) was Lutheran, and her father Ludwig Karl Mayer, a physician, was Jewish and was born in 1876. Her ethnic identity reportedly did not become an issue until the Nazi Party rose to power in the early 1930s. ==Fencing career==

Mayer was only 13 when she won the German women's foil championship in 1924. Olympics Mayer won a gold medal in fencing at the age of 17 at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, representing Germany, winning 18 bouts and losing only 2. She later studied towards a master's degree at the University of California at Berkeley, and fenced for the USC Fencing Club. Joseph Goebbels required of the press that "no comments may be made regarding Helene Mayer's non-Aryan ancestry". ==Return to Germany and death==

In 1952, Mayer returned to Germany, where she married an old friend, Erwin Falkner von Sonnenburg, in a quiet May ceremony in Munich. ==Legacy==

Mayer was named one of the top 100 female athletes of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated. She was inducted into the USFA Hall of Fame in 1963. ==Accomplishments==

• 1924: German Foil Champion • 1925: German Foil Champion • 1926: German Foil Champion • 1927: German Foil Champion • 1928: German Foil Champion • Olympic gold medal, Foil, German Team • Winner Foil, Italian National Championships • 1929: German Foil Champion • World Foil Champion • 1930: German Foil Champion • 1931: World Foil Champion • 1932: German Olympic Foil Team • 1933: U.S. Foil Champion (outdoors) • 1934: U.S. Foil Champion • 1935: U.S. Foil Champion • 1936: Olympic silver medal, Foil, German Team • 1937: U.S. Foil Champion • World Foil Champion • 1938: U.S. Foil Champion • 1939: U.S. Foil Champion • 1941: U.S. Foil Champion • 1942: U.S. Foil Champion • 1946: U.S. Foil Champion ==See also==