Karl Ritter von Halt, bornKarl Ferdinand Halt (2 June 1891 – 5 August 1964) was a sport official inNazi Germany and theGerman Federal Republic. He was born and died inMunich.[1]
Karl Ritter von Halt was atrack and field athlete who competed in the1912 Summer Olympics. He finished 22nd in thejavelin throw competition and 14th in theshot put event. He also participated in thepentathlon competition. He was eliminated in the third event because he did not finish his 200 m run. He also participated as a member of the German team in the first round of the4x100 metre relay competition. Halt finished ninth in thedecathlon.[citation needed]
He nearly won the decathlon at the 1914 Baltic Games inMalmö, losing to Finland's Johan Svanström by a fraction of a point after a calculation error had been fixed.[2]
In 1921 he becameKarl Ritter von Halt after he received theMilitary Order of Max Joseph.[citation needed]
In 1932 Less than three days before the10,000 m, a special commission of the IAAF, consisting of the same seven members that had suspended Nurmi, rejected Finn's entries and barred him from competing in Los Angeles.[3]Sigfrid Edström, president of the IAAF and chairman of its executive council, stated that the full congress of the IAAF, which was scheduled to start the next day, could not reinstate Nurmi for the Olympics but merely review the phases and political angles related to the case.[3] The AP called this "one of the slickest political maneuvers in international athletic history", and wrote that the Games would now be "like Hamlet without the celebrated Dane in the cast."[4] Thousands protested against the action in Helsinki.[5] Details of the case were not released to the press, but the evidence against Nurmi was believed to be the sworn statements from German race promoters that Nurmi had received $250–500 per race when running in Germany in autumn 1931.[4] The statements were produced by Karl Ritter von Halt, after Edström had sent him increasingly threatening letters warning that if evidence against Nurmi were not provided he would be "unfortunately obliged to take stringent action against theGerman Athletics Association."[6]
In 1936, he was named President of the Committee for the organization of theFourth Winter Olympics inGarmisch byReichssportführerHans von Tschammer und Osten. Karl Ritter von Halt was elected a member of the Executive Committee of theInternational Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1937, a post he held until 1945.
In 1944, Karl Ritter von Halt led the Sports Office of the Third Reich,Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen (NSRL), taking over fromArno Breitmeyer asReichssportführer. He remained the NSRL leader until the office and the organization were disbanded in 1945 followingNazi Germany's defeat inWorld War II. From 1945 to 1950, he was held at theNKVD special camp Nr. 2 at the site of the formerBuchenwald concentration camp.
Karl Ritter von Halt was successful in clearing his past as Nazi leader in the post-war years, although tourists to Garmisch protested in 2006 that the town's football stadium was still named after him. It was quietly renamed Stadion am Gröben. Ritter von Halt led theNational Olympic Committee of Germany between 1951 and 1961, succeedingDuke Adolf Friedrich of Mecklenburg.
| Preceded by | President of Organizing Committee for Summer Olympic Games(withJoseph Goebbels) 1936 | Succeeded by |
|  | |
