Gerhard von Düsterlho

Rower Gerhard von Düsterlho was a member of the German coxed eights that was eliminated in the repêchage at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games. In 1929 and 1930 he was the German double sculls champion with Herbert Buhtz. At the time, Düsterlho enjoyed his greatest successes in this class. He had a disagreement with Buhtz two years before the 1932 Games and he moved into the coxed eights. He was expecting to compete in his second Olympics in 1936 having won the Olympic qualifier with the coxed four. Due to injury to their stroke, however, the second German four was nominated in their place.

After his medical state examination in 1937, he initially worked in Magdeburg as a gynecologist in the city hospital. In 1939 he was drafted to the Army, and at the beginning of 1944 was kept in Russian captivity in Romania as a staff physician. He was then deported to Siberia and was not released until the end of 1948. After World War II, from which he returned with severe tuberculosis, he became the chief physician of gynecology at the City Hospital in Potsdam-Babelsberg in 1954. In November 1960, he left former GDR with his wife and three children as a political refugee. He then practiced in Mannheim until his death from bone cancer in 1973.