Max Scheuer (9 September 1895 – post August 1941)[1] was an Austrian international footballer who played the defender position.[2][3] He played for the Austria national football team in the 1923 season. In the 1920s, he played for and captained Hakoah Vienna. He was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp at some point after August 1941.
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date of birth | 9 September 1895 | ||
| Place of birth | Austria | ||
| Date of death | post August 1941[1] | ||
| Place of death | Auschwitz, Third Reich | ||
| Position(s) | Defender | ||
| International career | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1923 | Austria | 1 | (0) |
Biography
editScheuer was born in Austria, and was Jewish.[3][4]
Scheuer was in the starting lineup and played as a defender for the Austria national football team against the Hungary national football team in a FIFA match in the 1923 season.[5][6][3]
In the 1920s Scheuer played for and captained Hakoah Vienna, an all-Jewish club.[7][8][9] With the team he won the Austrian championship in the 1924–25 Austrian First League season, the first professional Austrian football title.[10]
In 1927, he and the team came to the United States to play the Bethlehem Steel Football Club in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the defending U.S. champion and 1926-27 champion of the American Soccer League.[11] He fled Austria to France, and played briefly for Olympique Marseille.[12][13]
He was captured by the Nazis while he was in France, on his way to neutral Switzerland.[8][12] Aged 45, Scheuer was sent to Drancy internment camp in France, and then to Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed in the early 1940s.[8][14]
Scheuer was one of at least seven Hakoah footballers killed in the Holocaust.[8][15][12] Others were Josef Kolisch, Ali Schönfeld, Oskar Grasgrün, Ernst Horowitz, and the brothers Erwin Pollak and Oskar Pollak.[16]
References
edit- ^ a b Dating with regard to Scheur's death based on the opening of Drancy internment camp. His death would have preceded the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945. Bolchover places the arrest under Vichy France, where the south of France was unoccupied by the Germans until November 1942.
- ^ "Hakoah Wien - Players from A-Z". worldfootball.net.
- ^ a b c "Max Scheuer » Record by opponent". worldfootball.net.
- ^ Bernard Postal, Jesse Silver, Roy Silver (1965). Encyclopedia of Jews in Sports
- ^ Strack-Zimmermann, Benjamin. "Max Scheuer". national-football-teams.com.
- ^ "Max Scheuer » Internationals". worldfootball.net.
- ^ David Bolchover (6 May 2019). "Remembering the cream of Jewish footballing talent killed in the Holocaust". The Guardian.
- ^ a b c d David Bolchover (2017). The Greatest Comeback: From Genocide To Football Glory; The Story of Béla Guttman
- ^ Alan McDougall (2020). Contested Fields; A Global History of Modern Football
- ^ Susanne Wurm (9 March 2018). ""DANUBE FOOTBALL" – VIENNA'S IDENTIFICATION WITH FOOTBALL – AND THE "DANUBE MAIDENS" – VIENNA'S FEMALE SWIMMING CHAMPIONS (until 1938)". Central European Economic and Social History.
- ^ "HAKOAH SOCCER TEAM HERE FOR BIG CLASH; Vienna Stars Quartered at Hotel Bethlehem -- Game at Lehigh Tomorrow; STEEL TEAM IN TOP FORM," The Globe-Times -- Bethlehem, April 19, 1927.
- ^ a b c Kevin E. Simpson (2016). Soccer Under the Swastika; Stories of Survival and Resistance During the Holocaust
- ^ William Bowman (2011). "Hakoah Vienna and the International Nature of Interwar Austrian Sports," Central European History 44, 642–68.
- ^ Heffernan, Conor (20 November 2014). "Hakoah Wien and Muscular Judaism". Physical Culture Study.
- ^ Anthony Clavane (2012). Does Your Rabbi Know You're Here?; The Story of English Football's Forgotten Tribe
- ^ Vuillemot, Pierre (8 November 2015). "Hakoah Vienne, l'histoire d'un monument juif". Footballski.