Otto Herschmann

Dr. Otto Herschmann (4 January 1877 – 17 June 1942) was an Austrian Jewish swimmer, fencer, lawyer, and sports official. He is one of only a few athletes who have won Olympic medals in multiple sports, having received a silver medal in swimming in 1896 and a silver medal in fencing in 1912. He also worked as a lawyer, and served as president of the Austrian Olympic Committee and the Austrian Swimming Federation. Herschmann was murdered by the Nazis in 1942 during The Holocaust.

Biography Herschmann was Jewish, and was born in Vienna, Austria. He was affiliated with the 1.W.A.S.C. in Vienna, and the Wiener AC in Vienna. On 30 March, he and the other swimmers were taken by boat into the Bay of Piraeus to compete in the open sea.

AinsworthSports.com ranked Herschmann as tied for the second-best swimmer of the 1890s, behind Alfréd Hajós. In 1904, he wrote Wiener Sport, which was published by H. Seemann.

Olympic fencing career In the 1906 Summer Olympics, Herschmann competed in Athens in individual sabre, but did not medal. In so doing, he became one of only a few athletes to win Olympic medals in more than one sport.

Other Jewish fencers who participated in the 1912 Olympics included Hungarian gold medal-winning sabre fencers Dr. Jenő Fuchs, Dr. Dezső Földes, Lajos Werkner, and Dr. Oszkár Gerde, and Austrian silver medal-winning sabre fencer Albert Bogen.

Herschmann was one of Europe's top authorities in sports. In November 1913, he traveled to various cities in the United States, including Boston, New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Chicago, to study US sports organizations and recruit trainers to work with Austrian athletes training for the Olympics. That month, when he was visiting the U.S. as the Austrian athletic envoy, the Boston Athletic Association gave him a banquet, and in December 1913 the Board of Governors of the New York Athletic Club held a banquet honoring him. He lauded the United States system for the quality of physical and mental training provided. He noted in contrast to the European system, high-quality training was provided to all athletes, not only those who lacked natural talent. On 14 January 1942, Herschmann was deported from Vienna to the General Government region of German-occupied Poland, where he died shortly after. Some sources report that he died in Izbica transit camp, while others suggest that he was gassed in Sobibor extermination camp.

Honors

Herschmann was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1989. On 7 November 2001 his hometown Vienna named a lane "Otto-Herschmann-Gasse" (Otto Herschmann Alley) in his honor in Simmering, the 11th District of Vienna.