Ludwig Guttmann speaks at the opening ceremony of the 1964 Summer Paralympic Games in Tokyo.
Photo: imago/TopFoto
The 17th Paralympic Summer Games opened in Paris on Wednesday evening. To better understand the origins of this sporting event, you have to go back more than 80 years. During the Second World War, thousands of British soldiers returned home with serious injuries. Many of them were fighter pilots with paraplegia, 80 percent of whom died within two years.
Ludwig Guttmann didn’t want to give up hope. The German-born neurologist revolutionized the treatment of spinal cord injuries starting in 1943 in Aylesbury, northwest of London. Those affected were no longer lying in the back corner of the hospital; instead, they received all-round care and their life expectancy increased.
“I am thrilled by Mr. Guttmann’s visionary power,” says Thomas Abel, professor of Paralympic sports at the German Sport University in Cologne. »Ludwig Guttmann was not driven by pity. He wanted to strengthen the rehabilitation of patients. And with it the chance that they will be able to take up work again at some point.«
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In the fall of 1944, Guttmann came across patients rushing through the hospital corridor in their wheelchairs. They pushed a pane across the parquet with walking sticks. Guttmann played along – it was the birth of wheelchair polo. Soon more and more patients were doing sports. In 1948, Guttmann organized an archery competition for 16 war invalids in the hospital park. These Stoke Mandeville Games began in July 1948 on the same day as the London Olympics.
These games now took place regularly, in 1952 with 130 athletes from several countries. They were the foundation for the Paralympics, which have been held every four years since 1960, usually shortly after the Olympic Games. But it wasn’t just about sport, says Andrew Parsons, President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC): »Ludwig Guttmann not only had the individual patient in mind, but also the community. The patients were able to accelerate their rehabilitation with exercise. They were able to go back to work, pay taxes and thus relieve the burden on the health system and the state.
The Paralympic movement honors Ludwig Guttmann because of his achievements. In 2014 he was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame for German sports. But why in Germany?
The German-Jewish doctor Guttmann worked in a clinic in Breslau in the 1920s. After the Nazis came to power, he was released and moved to the city’s Jewish Hospital. During the “Reichsprogromnacht” he gave 64 Jews refuge in the hospital. In 1939, Guttmann fled to England with 40 marks in his pocket. Also there: his six-year-old daughter Eva, who is now called Eva Loeffler and always reminds her of her father.
“The British soldiers initially called my father ‘The Kraut’ condescendingly,” remembers Eva Loeffler. “But after just a few weeks they called him Poppa, they loved him.” After the war, Guttmann repeatedly came to Germany for research. He was honored again shortly before the Paralympics in Paris – at an IPC event in Stoke Mandeville.
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