Johann Trollmann

Trollmann in 1928
Personal information
Nickname	Rukeli[1]
Nationality	German
Born	Johann Wilhelm Trollmann (1907-12-27)27 December 1907 Wilsche,Province of Hanover,Kingdom of Prussia,German Empire
Died	9 April 1944(1944-04-09) (aged 36) Wittenberge,Brandenburg,Nazi Germany
Height	~1.80 m (5 ft 11 in)
Boxing career
Weight class	Light heavyweight
Boxing record
Total fights	64
Wins	31
Win by KO	11
Losses	19
Draws	14

Johann Wilhelm "Rukeli" Trollmann (27 December 1907 – 9 April 1944) was a GermanSintiboxer.^[2]

Trollmann was born inWilsche [de], a village part ofGifhorn, into a poorProtestant family. His father, Wilhelm "Schnipplo" Trollmann (1867–1933), was an ethnic German umbrella maker and part-time musician, while his mother, Friederike "Pessy" Weiss (1874–1946), was of Sinti origin. He had eight siblings: his three sisters Maria, Anna, and Wilhelmine, and five brothers Wilhelm, Ferdinand, Julius, Albert, and Heinrich.^[3][4] The family moved toHanover, settling in the boroughRicklingen, in the early 1910s. Trollmann attended the localVolksschule until third grade.^[4][5]

Trollmann picked up boxing when he was a child and had his first amateur match at eight years old. He was called "Rukeli" by other Sinti, derived from theRomani word for tree ("ruk"), for his upright stance. Trollmann's youngest brothers, Albert ("Benny") and Heinrich ("Stabeli"), also boxed in their private time.^[4][6][7]

Although the family had kept close ties to the Roma community, the Trollmanns were regarded asassimilated. Trollmann's father had served inBraunschweig'swater police duringWorld War I while the family of his mother had long abandoned theiritinerant lifestyle.^[8]

Boxing as a sport had been severely limited during the German Empire, with outright bans in some regions. Training and professional matches became openly accessible in 1919 with the founding of theWeimar Republic. Trollmann entered the boxing scene in the early 1920s. He won the regional title ofHanover district's boxing championship four times in a row and became a member of the BC Heros Eintracht in 1922, thus joining theDeutsche Reichsverband für Amateur-Boxen (DRfAB). Trollmann became famous in the mid-1920s for winning the North-German amateur boxing championship.^[8]

With the rising popularity of boxing, Trollmann entered officially held matches as amiddleweight by 1924. Hislooks made him popular with the audience, earning him compliments by both women and men during matches and dedicated columns in newspapers in his hometown.^[9] He was well-received for his distinct boxing style, which was compared to dance for Trollmann's quick and agile moves. Trollmann's critics primarily focused on his Romani heritage and mocked his technique as "un-German", with some newspapers derisively nicknaming him "the Dancing Gypsy" ("der tanzende Zigeuner") or just "Gipsy/Gibsy".^[10][8][11]

Trollmann sought to join the German national boxing team for the1928 Summer Olympics, but was barred by officials, officially for "inedequate performance". For the middleweight class, the committee instead selected Walter Cunow, who had been previously defeated by Trollmann several times; Cunow himself would be replaced byAlbert Leidmann. It has since been suspected that Trollmann's rejection was related to the Weimar government's unwillingness to be represented by a Sinto at the event.^[10]

In June 1929, Trollmann left the BC Heros Eintracht and joined BC Sparta Linden, primarily made up of athletes with working class backgrounds, to focus on national competitions in professional sports. From then, he lived primarily inBerlin, being coached by Ernst Zirzow. Travelling throughout Germany, Trollmann fought against opponents, both German and foreign, in thewelterweight toheavyweight classes.^[10]

FollowingAdolf Hitler's rise to power in January 1933, the Nazi government officially renamed boxing to "German fistfighting" ("Deutscher Faustkampf") and declared the sport as an integral part of the effort to create a "defensibleVolkskörper". The following month, DRfAB was restructured intoDeutscher Amateur-Boxverband (DABV), part of the newly established centralised boxing associationVerband Deutscher Faustkämpfer, under chairman Georg Radamm, a long-time member of theNazi Party.^[9] The change led to informal discrimination against athletes with non-German or mixed ethnic backgrounds.^[10] Trollmann's family had been largelyconservative, with Trollmann's eldest brother Wilhelm ("Carlo") joining theSA in 1933, but he was ousted the same year for being Roma.^[8]

On 9 June 1933, Trollmann fought for the German light-heavyweight title against Adolf Witt, in a highly publicised match attended by Nazi officials, including VDF chairman Radamm. Aware that Trollmann was likely to win, which would call the Nazi government's professed superiority of the German "Aryans" into question, Radamm had instructed the jury to judge "no result" and although Trollmann clearly led by points over the course of six rounds, the jury obeyed Radamm's instructions. The audience rebelled and after thirty minutes, the jury acknowledged Trollmann as the victor.^[8][9]

However, six days later he was stripped of the title, with a VDF letter stating that both fighters had "performed inadequately" and that Trollmann had shown "unsportsmanlike behaviour" by crying tears of joy while receiving thetrophy belt. A new fight was scheduled for 21 July, with runner-upGustav Eder [de], a heavyweight, as Trollmann's opponent. Trollmann was threatened that he had to change his "dancing" style or lose his licence. Trollmann arrived the day of the match with his hair dyed blond and his face whitened with flour, the caricature of an Aryan. He took the blows of his opponent as he was asked for five rounds before he collapsed.^[12] The defeat signalled his permanent expulsion from professional boxing, with his licence being revoked in the following autumn, but this did nothing to dismantle his popular image. To avoid further issues with Nazi officials, Trollmann briefly went into hiding in the region aroundTeutoburg Forest.^[10]

Between 1933 and 1935, Trollmann continued to earn a living as a boxer at carnivals and other small-scale events. He resided in Berlin-Charlottenburg with his girlfriend Olga Frieda Bilda (1915 – after 1975), having a daughter, Rita, in March 1935. The couple married on 1 June 1935.^[10]

In July 1935, Trollmann was detained atRummelsburg workhouse [de] following a forcedsterilisation order. With the introduction of theNuremberg Laws in September 1935, the persecution ofSinti andRoma in Germany dramatically increased.^[13] Trollmann was labelled "feeble-minded since birth" and forcibly sterilisedc. 23 December 1935, as part ofNazi eugenics efforts targeting ethnic minorities. In September 1938, Trollmann divorced from his wife in hopes of covering for his daughter who, under the Nuremberg Laws, would be judged aMischling for being half-Sintiza.^[14]

By 1938, Trollmann had been transferred toHannover-Ahlem subcamp, but was released the same year. In November 1939 he was drafted into theWehrmacht as aninfantryman. He was stationed inoccupied France,Belgium, andPoland, where he was wounded in June 1941 during the early stages ofOperation Barbarossa, being returned to Germany as a result; he was officially discharged in early 1942, when Sinti and Roma were banned from serving in the military.^[15][16]

TheGestapo arrested Trollmann in June 1942 while in Hanover. He was tortured during custody at the city's branch office of theReichszentrale zur Bekämpfung des Zigeunerunwesens [de] and in October of the same year, he was internedNeuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg. He tried to keep a low profile, but was recognized bySchutzhaftlagerführerAlbert Lütkemeyer [de], who had been a boxing official before the war.^[16] He used Trollmann as a trainer for his troops during the nights in exchange for a slice of buttered bread for each time Trollmann was knocked out. Having already lost 30 kg before arriving in Neuengamme, the spars were treated as leisure by theSS guards and regularly devolved into beatdowns, causing Trollmann's health to deteriorate further. After three months, the prisoners committee decided to act and faked Trollmann's death on 9 February 1943, being listed in the camp book as having died ofpneumonia compounded byvascular disease. His family received an urn, which was buried at Anger Cemetery in Hanover. In reality, the committee had managed to get him transferred to theWittenberge satellite camp under an assumed identity.^[8]

By spring 1944, the former star was again recognised and thecamp elders organized a fight between him and Emil Cornelius, a former criminal and hated "Heu" commandoKapo (a prisoner given privileges for taking on responsibilities in the camp, often a convict working for a reduced sentence or parole). Trollmann won, Cornelius sought revenge for his humiliation and forced Trollmann to work all day until he was exhausted, before attacking and killing him with a shovel. Trollmann was 36 years old.^[1] According to fellow Sinto internee Rudolf Landsberger, the SS covered up the death as an accident and buried Trollmann in a forest outside the town cemetery.^[8]

Two of Trollmann's brothers also died as a result of theRomani Holocaust: his youngest brother Heinrich, who had also been a communist, died inAuschwitz concentration camp in 1943, while another brother, Julius ("Mauso"), died in 1958 from long-term health effects of his imprisonment, having been renderedparaplegic from severe beatings at a hard labour camp.^[3]

In 2003, theGerman boxing federation [de] officially recognised Trollmann as the winner of the 1933 championship.^[1]

On 9 June 2010, the anniversary of his championship fight,^[17] the German artist collectiveBewegung Nurr erected a temporary memorial "9841" in the BerlinVictoria Park to honour Trollmann.^[18] The memorial was also displayed the following year in Hannover and in Dresden in 2012 for six weeks. The title refers to Trollmann's prison number.^[1]

In 2015, the Italian alternative rock bandC.F.F. e il Nomade Venerabile released the songCome fiori dedicated to Trollmann. This song was the inspiration for the theathral showMy Inv(f)erno... gypsy life which opened the X edition of the International TeatroLab Festival at the Tagliavini theatre inNovellara in March 2019.

In 2016,Dario Fo, recipient of the 1997Nobel Prize in Literature, published the bookRazza di zingaro based on Trollmann's life.

In 2022, the German television seriesBabylon Berlin season four, a fictional version of Trollmann is portrayed byHannes Wegener and is revealed to be the half-brother of one of the series' leads, Lotte Ritter. A fight takes place between Trollman and Willy Bolze, who in real life was Trollman's first professional boxing opponent. The dates are different in the show with their fight taking place in 1931 instead of 1929.

• Boxing record for Johann Trollmann fromBoxRec(registration required)

• 1907 births
• 1944 deaths
• German Sinti people
• People who died in Neuengamme concentration camp
• Romani sportspeople
• German people of Romani descent
• German civilians killed in World War II
• German people who died in Nazi concentration camps
• People from Gifhorn (district)
• People who died in the Romani Holocaust
• People who faked their own death
• German male boxers
• Deaths by beating in Europe
• German Army personnel of World War II
• Boxers from Lower Saxony
• 20th-century German sportsmen

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