wikipedia28 | 100 Intersex track and field athlete: Dora or Heinrich Ratjen?
from the series 100 photos - 100 stories
Dora Ratjen competed at the 1936 Olympics and held the world record in 1938. But the Bremen high jumper is the subject of one of the biggest sporting scandals. Because Dora Ratjen was a man and attracted a lot of attention.
1938 Olympics: A scandal!
At the European Athletics Championships 1938 in Vienna, where women were allowed to compete for the first time, Ratjen became European champion with a new world record height of 1.70 meters. On the return journey, a Magdeburg police doctor discovered that Ratjen had male genitalia, but that she had an anatomical abnormality due to a cord of scar tissue from birth. During a stopover at the train station in Magdeburg, Ratjen was asked to follow the officers to the police station. The 19-year-old hesitated briefly, but then explained that she was a man. It was the end of a career that was as bizarre as it was unique and one of the biggest sporting scandals in German history: the world's best female high jumper and one of the most popular German sportswomen - a man in women's clothing. Ratjen himself was glad that his double existence was over, the police reported. Ratjen's father initially resisted the fact that "Dora" was a man and initially refused to change her name. in 1939, however, she officially became a man and was given the name "Heinrich". Since then he has lived as a man, the proceedings were also dropped at the time and he went off to fight in the Second World War.
