Heinrich Rondi

A German wrestler and weightlifter from Düsseldorf, Heinrich Rondi was second at the 1907 World Wrestling Championships in unlimited Greco-Roman, and won the 1906 Unofficial European Wrestling Championships in that class. In 1906 and 1907 he won the European Weightlifting Championships in the unlimited class, in 1907 also won the World Championships.

Rondi won a gold medal with the German tug-of-war team at the 1906 Athina Olympics. In weightlifting he won a bronze medal in the unlimited class with two hands, equalling his teammate Heinrich Schneidereit and Frenchman Alexandre Maspoli. Rondi also came in sixth in the unlimited class with one hand. As a wrestler he finished fourth in Greco-Roman heavyweight.

Rondi owned a pub in Düsseldorf, where a man named Moritz Sommer also lived. In 1938 the Nazis tried to capture Sommer as he was a so-called “half-Jew,” but Rondi stood up to the Nazis and they surrendered. Rondi and his neighbors hid Sommer until two days before the Americans reached Düsseldorf in April 1945, when a Nazi patrol caught Sommer, tortured him, and hung him in a public place at Oberbilker Markt.