Country (sports) Germany Role Tennis Player Name Nelly Neppach | French Open 2R (1927) French Open 3R (1927) Died May 1933, Berlin, Germany | |
Nelly Neppach (née Bamberger; [ˈnɛli] ˈnɛpaːχ]; 16 September 1898 – 7 May 1933) was a German female tennis player. Neppach was the first German female to establish an international reputation, but was forced out of the sport due to rising anti-Semitism in the 1930s. She committed suicide at age 34.
Contents
Biography
Neppach was born at Frankfurt am Main in 1898. She began playing tennis in her early youth and won her first title in 1910, aged 12.
After World War I, Neppach married film architect and producer Robert Neppach and moved to Berlin where she joined the sports club Tennis Borussia Berlin.
In 1925, Neppach reached her greatest success by beating Ilse Friedleben in the final of the German championships at Hamburg. In 1926, she was invited by Suzanne Lenglen to play international tournaments at the French Riviera, at a time German players were still banned from international tournaments as a consequence of World War I. Neppach travelled to France and played matches against Lenglen as well as U.S. legend Helen Wills. However, the German tennis federation became angry about her unauthorized trip and eventually forced her to abort it and return to Germany.
At her only appearance on a major tournament at the 1927 French Championships, she reached the third round where she lost to Eileen Bennett in three sets. During the following years, Neppach's and Ilse Friedleben's place at the top of German women's tennis was taken over by younger and more successful players like Cilly Aussem and Hilde Krahwinkel. Still Neppach was ranked ninth nationwide in 1932.
End of career
On 11 April 1933, a few months after the Nazi Party had seized power in German in January, Neppach, who was Jewish, quit her membership at Tennis Borussia. Even though the circumstances of this decision are not known in detail, she was almost certainly forced to do so, as most German tennis clubs at that time expelled their Jewish members. In the same month, the German tennis federation announced that Jewish player were no longer allowed to play international tournaments.
Neppach was the first German female tennis player who had gained international appreciation.
Death
On the night of 7/8 May 1933, Neppach, obviously in despair because of the increasing discrimination and persecution of Jewish people in Germany and her isolation from tennis in particular, took her life in her flat at Berlin using Barbital and town gas. Anti-Semitism—soon to be codified as the Nuremberg Laws—had invaded all aspects of life in Germany, and sport was no exception. Neppach's was among of a rash of Jewish suicides, which were reported with alarm abroad. "It is impossible to publish a complete list of the suicides brought about by Nazi brutality," wrote the Hebrew Standard of Australasia in mentioning her death.