player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameOscar
LastnameKreuzer
GenderMale
CountryGermany
Date of birth1887-06-14
Place of birthFrankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany
Date of death1968-05-03
Place of deathWiesbaden, West-Germany

About

The following piece originally appeared in the book entitled ‘Tennis in Deutschland. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Zum 100-jährigen Bestehen des Deutschen Tennis Bundes.’/‘Tennis in Germany. From Its Beginnings to the Present Day. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the German Tennis Federation’. The book in question was first published in 2002.

Oscar Kreuzer – The Number Two Man

By Ulrich Kaiser

[Translated from the German by Mark Ryan]

They were good, carefree and peaceful times back then, at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The terrible term ‘world war’ had not yet been coined. ‘Jugendstil’, the German version of art nouveau, had come into existence, and those were the years of the great discoveries that are very much taken for granted nowadays. Clubs were founded, as were associations and federations; rules and regulations were drawn up. Those were also the years in which certain sports acquired the forms they still more or less have today.

Oscar Kreuzer was born into this beautiful world on 14 June 1887, in Frankfurt-am-Main. He died on 3 May 1968. He lived the life of a great sportsman in which world championships, Olympic honours and many other titles played a role. Nowadays one can certainly speak of that time as the infancy of lawn tennis. The source for the existence of this volume on the history of lawn tennis in Germany can also be traced back to this era.

As a member of the Frankfurter Sportclub, founded in 1880, Oscar Kreuzer won the German Rugby Championships and also played several international matches in this ‘rough game for gentlemen’. The Frankfurter Sportclub was, in fact, only seven years older than Kreuzer. Although lawn tennis is certainly a game for individualists, Oscar Kreuzer was a team player throughout his life, not only where rugby is concerned, but also in relation to lawn tennis. Perhaps that is the reason why he was always considered the number two behind Otto Froitzheim, who in those days was what one would call a ‘star’ one hundred years later.

However, one should not assume that Kreuzer suffered from this state of affairs. On the contrary, he probably even felt good to be in the shadow of the greater player. Together, Kreuzer and Froitzheim twice won the men’s doubles title at what was then the renowned World Hard Court Championships tournament, in 1912 and 1914. By 1914, when the peaceful years came to such a sudden end, he had taken part in the Olympic Games twice – in London in 1908; and in Stockholm in 1912, where he won the bronze medal in the men’s singles event. In 1913, he reached the semi-final of the men’s singles event at Wimbledon, where he also won the men’s plate event, in those days a highly-regarded consolation prize in the lawn tennis Mecca.

Together with his friend and doubles partner Otto Froitzheim, Kreuzer was intercepted by an Italian passenger ship in Gibraltar on their journey home from taking part in the Davis Cup in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in August 1914. They were subsequently taken to an internment camp in England, where they remained until 1918.

When Oscar Kreuzer – who was a left-hander – ended his long lawn tennis career in 1926, he had won a large number of national and international championships in Germany as well as titles in France, Denmark and Austria. The list of his victories includes wins over practically every world-class player of that time. With his spirited and sometimes risky game Kreuzer always had the chance to beat the best players.

As has already been said, those were good times in the final years of the German Empire. The men and women who spent almost the whole year travelling throughout Europe displaying their artful skills were certainly not from the poorest of families. They must have made a merry band. There was the rascal Tony Wilding from New Zealand, with his motorbike; the Australian wood dealer and future knight, Norman Brookes; the Munich-born brothers Robert and Heinrich Kleinschroth; the Russian Count Mikhail Sumarokov-Elston; Bela von Kehrling from Hungary; Countess Clara von der Schulenburg, future wife of Count Viktor Voss; Dora Köring, the first German woman to play at Wimbledon; and Mieken Rieck, who was also a national hockey player.

They played behind the tall green hedges of the elegant clubs, anywhere where it was beautiful: in Marienbad, Karlsbad, Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo, Menton, Saint Moritz and Geneva, and at the tournaments held in the German spa resorts of Bad Homburg, Baden-Baden, Hanau, Wiesbaden, Sopot, Travemünde and Heringsdorf. In Berlin they played at the Rot-Weiss-Club and the Blau-Weiss Club, at the Rochusclub in Düsseldorf, at the Iphitos Club in Munich and at the Alster Club in Hamburg. Those were certainly wonderful, endless summer days. Oscar Kreuzer definitely enjoyed them as much as the other players.

Another important point must be mentioned: in those days the tournaments were open only to amateurs and, with the exception of the tennis coaches, no one was called a professional. Along with his friends, Oscar Kreuzer was regarded by the guests at the spa resorts more or less as artists providing entertainment. To this end they had their expenses reimbursed – the costs of their journey, their accommodation and the food in the hotels in which they stayed.

The guests at the spa resorts were spoilt because very often what were known as handicap tournaments were held in which, in accordance with a very complicated handicapping system, they could play against the stars, or with them in doubles events. A high council member forbade some of Kreuzer’s friends from taking part in this ‘circus’, so they entered under a different name. The Zemla brothers Ladislav and Zdenek, who were from Bohemia, enjoyed a great deal of success at the tournaments held in the Bohemian spa resorts using the pseudonyms ‘Razny’ and ‘Jansky’, respectively. At that time there was no television to help identify the players.

After the end of his career as a sportsman Oscar Kreuzer settled in Wiesbaden, close to where his former doubles partner Otto Froitzheim lived. Kreuzer always found a lot of people willing to listen to his stories from a time that will never return. He was 80 years old at the time of his death in 1968.
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