Transcending Competition
Long and Owens maintained that friendship after the games were complete, exchanging letters regularly even as their two nations tooled up for war. They shared with each other the details of their families, their concerns for the present and their plans for the future. Of their deep and abiding friendship, Owens would later write, “It took a lot of courage for Lutz to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have, and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace.”
As did all able-bodied German males, Lutz Long eventually went to war, serving with the Afrika Korps. Despite open combat between their nations, the two men still exchanged regular correspondence. While in North Africa, Lutz penned his final missive to his friend. Here is an excerpt. Keep in mind that Long’s native language was German.
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“I am here, Jesse, where it seems there is only the dry sand and the wet blood. I do not fear so much for myself, my friend Jesse, I fear for my woman who is home, and my young son Karl, who has never really known his father.
My heart tells me, if I am honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war is done, someday find my Karl, and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we were not separated by war. I am saying — tell him how things can be between men on this earth.
If you do this something for me, this thing that I need the most to know will be done, I do something for you, now. I tell you something I know you want to hear. And it is true.
That hour in Berlin when I first spoke to you, when you had your knee upon the ground, I knew that you were in prayer.
Then I not know how I know. Now I do. I know it is never by chance that we come together. I come to you that hour in 1936 for purpose more than der Berliner Olympiade.
And you, I believe, will read this letter, while it should not be possible to reach you ever, for purpose more even than our friendship.
I believe this shall come about because I think now that God will make it come about. This is what I have to tell you, Jesse.
I think I might believe in God. And I pray to him that, even while it should not be possible for this to reach you ever, these words I write will still be read by you.
Your brother, Lutz
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Lutz Long was transferred to Sicily where he was subsequently killed in action. His friend Jesse Owens would not discover the details until much later. In 1951, Owens traveled to Germany in search of 10-year-old Karl Long, now an orphan after having lost his mother to the war as well. Ten years after that, Jesse Owens served as best man at Karl’s wedding. Owens maintained a fatherly relationship with Karl until the Olympian died in 1980.
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