player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameRoderich Ferdinand Ottomar
LastnameMenzel
GenderMale
CountryCzechoslovakia
Date of birth1907-04-13
Place of birthLiberec, Czechoslovakia
Date of death1987-10-18
Place of deathMunchen, West-Germany

About

The following piece was translated and adapted from the Czech-language Wikipedia entry on Roderich Menzel, which can be accessed here:
Roderich Menzel – Wikipedie

Roderich Menzel was born on 13 April 1907 in Reichenberg in Bohemia (modern-day Liberec in the Czech Republic). As a child, he lived with his parents and two brothers in a three-storey house in Römheldstraße 7 (now known as Tatranská Street). His father Ernst, who was born into the family of a glassworks manager in the mountain village of Wilhelmshöhe, rose from the position of correspondent to be a partner in the cable manufacturer Felten & Guilleaume’s office in North Bohemia.

Roderich Menzel started playing competitive football while studying business at secondary school (he was a goalkeeper for RSK Reichenberg) and made his first senior appearance in 1923 at the age of 16. When recalling his goalkeeping career, Menzel often told a funny story about his great role model, another goalkeeper for RSK Reichenberg, whose name was Ende. The line-ups of both teams were always published in the match programme, and the name of the home team’s goalkeeper was always at the very bottom. It often happened that people thought that the entire program ended there (Ende is German for end).

Menzel was just as good at tennis as he was at football, so he soon had to choose between the two sports. He picked tennis and became the junior national champion in 1925. Soon before that, he had to cope with a great family loss when his father died of a heart attack due to severe bilateral pneumonia at the age of just 44.

Tennis career

In 1928, Menzel qualified for the men’s singles draw at Wimbledon for the first time, and in the same year he also represented Czechoslovakia for the first time in the Davis Cup, against Sweden, where he won both his singles matches. He subsequently continued his unprecedentedly successful record in the most famous team competition of all, and when he played his last match in the competition in 1938, he could boast an exceptional record (61 wins and 23 losses), which no other Czechoslovak or Czech tennis player (including Jan Kodes and Ivan Lendl) has surpassed to this day.

In 1931, he won the men’s singles title at one of the most prestigious tournaments at the time, the German International Tennis Championships, over Gustav Jaenecke. In 1932, Menzel won the men’s singles title at the Monte Carlo Masters, beating George Lyttleton Rogers in the final. Only a few weeks later he achieved his best result to date at a major by making it to the semi-finals of the men’s singles event at the French International Championships, where he lost to Giorgio de Stefani in four sets.

In 1933, Menzel reached the quarter-finals of the men’s singles event at both the French International Championships and Wimbledon, where he lost to Henri Cochet (in three sets) and Ellsworth Vines (in four sets) respectively. One year later, he again reached the quarter-finals in Paris before losing to Gottfried von Cramm in five sets. At Wimbledon, he reached the third round, where Fred Perry beat him in a memorable five-set match.

In 1934, Menzel also won the men’s singles title at the Czech International Championships (over von Cramm) and at the prestigious Egyptian International Championships tournament in Cairo, where he would also triumph four more times in the same event in subsequent years. Arthur Wallis Myers of The Daily Telegraph ranked Roderich Menzel as the world no. 7 for 1934.

In 1935, Menzel reached the quarter-finals of the men’s singles event at the Australian International Championships, the French International Championships and Wimbledon. He also reached the fourth round of the same event at the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills. With Kay Stammers, he was also runner-up in the mixed doubles event at the U.S. Nationals, where they lost to Sarah Palfrey and Enrique Maier.

Towards the end of the season in 1935, Menzel reached the final of the men’s singles event at the Pacific Southwest Tournament in Los Angeles same year, where he was beaten by Donald Budge. However, this was Menzel’s last success for a long time. In 1936, he suffered two breakdowns which resulted in serious heart problems. For more than a year he was forced to convalesce, and spent nearly one year receiving treatment in Bad Gräfenberg (now Lázně Jeseník).

Menzel returned to tennis competition in 1937. He lost in the first round of the men’s singles event at Wimbledon. However, he and Lasislav Hecht made it to the semi-finals of the men’s doubles event, where they were beaten in three sets by Pat Hughes and Raymond Tuckey. One year later, in 1938, Menzel enjoyed his greatest success in the men’s singles event at a major tournament when he reached the final at the French International Championships. He was beaten there in straight sets by Donald Budge, who would go on to complete the grand slam later that year.

In September 1938, on the basis of the Munich Agreement, it was decided that Czechoslovakia had to lose a part of its territory (Sudetenland) to Nazi Germany. Menzel, who was born and spent his childhood in Reichenberg, now the capital of a new German state, thus became a German citizen. In May 1939, only a few months later, he represented his new homeland, Germany, in the Davis Cup.

After the outbreak of World War Two, Menzel started working as a journalist for Großdeutscher Rundfunk [Greater German Radio]. Unlike his other colleagues on the German Davis Cup team (Henner Henkel was killed at Battle of Stalingrad, von Cramm was wounded on the Eastern Front), Menzel did not have to go to the front, and spent the war years in the relative safety of Berlin, where he lived in the Bavarian Quarter). After the war, Menzel tried to build on his pre-war tennis achievements, but with the exception of a few victories in tournaments of only regional significance, his career came to an end.

Roderich Menzel was unusually tall (6ft, 3in), the ideal height for the serve-and-volley style of play. He was also notorious for his fierce temper. He once refused to play during a tournament until the nearby bells of a church had stopped ringing or a child had stopped crying in the stands. Menzel also liked to passionately ‘argue things’ with the umpire and fans.

Travels

In addition to sports and writing, Menzel had another great passion – travel. As he himself claimed, he was often happy when he was lost at a tournament because he had more time to explore the surrounding beauties. And when he saw something exceptional, he often thought about it during the next match.

Among his most favorite parts of the world was Africa, and not just because he managed to win the international tournament in Cairo 5 times! He felt most at home in Cairo. That city, the pyramids, Alexandria, Luxor, the Nile, Aswan – all of these places always made a huge impression on him. He also often recalled meeting a lot of interesting people, for example Sheikh Mussa, the king of snakes.

Menzel also visited Australia several times, but it seems to have left him with mixed feelings. Perhaps this had something to do with an argument that took place during a doubles match when the spectators, even though it was already dark, did not want to allow the players to interrupt the match and finish it the next day. (“Play on, we paid for it!”) But even that did not stop him from travelling all over Australia and, subsequently, the entire Pacific region (Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii).

In the summer of 1935, Menzel visited India – Calcutta and Bombay – and went elephant riding, on jungle expeditions and met the Maharaja of Mysore. This region in particular enchanted him: “Mysore has two skies – one above me and the other below me!” he said. Menzel subsequently visited Ceylon and Japan. On the return journey he also visited Hong Kong and Singapore.

Thanks to tennis, Menzel had the opportunity to see almost the whole world, which was still completely different from the world we know today, at the very end of the so-called colonial era. As he himself nostalgically recalled in his autobiography ‘Liebe zu Böhmen’/‘A Love of Bohemia’: “A lot has changed since I visited distant lands.”

Literary career

Even when at the peak of his sporting career, Menzel contributed to many newspapers and magazines, not just articles about sports, but also observations from his travels. During his tennis career, he travelled to every continent, something that was not very common at that time.

Before World War Two, Menzel most often contributed to the German-language newspaper ‘Prager Tagblatt’, where his colleagues included names such as Egon Erwin Kisch and Max Brod. He not only contributed to the sports column, but also wrote poems. It is also worth mentioning that for two years he alternated with Hermann Hesse and Karel Capek in writing the Saturday column in the ‘Prager Tagblatt’.

In addition to this important Prague German-language daily, he also wrote for two other German-language newspapers, ‘BZ am Mittag’ and ‘Vossische Zeitung’. In 1931, he published the sports novel ‘Der weiße Weg’/‘The white Path’, which was also published in serial form in the Zurich daily ‘Sport’ and published in Czech under the title ‘Bílá cesta’.

Soon afterwards, his other books, about tennis, began to be published: ‘Tennis… wie ich es sehe!’/’Tennis as I see it’ (1932), Tennis-Parade (1937) and ‘Geliebte Tennispartnerin’/‘Beloved Tennis Partner’ (1940). However, he was only able to fully devote himself to his passion for writing after his sports career ended.

In his new home, Landshut in Bavaria, he wrote books not only about his favorite sports of tennis and football, but also became interested in other genres. The medical book ‘Triumph der Medizin’/‘The Triumph of Medicine’ (1950) was a success, and even had admirers among professionals working in medicine (in Japan it was included in the mandatory reading at medical schools).

Menzel later moved to Munich, where he met his future wife, the illustrator Johanna Sengler, who gave him the idea to start writing books for children. From the early 1960s, sometimes under the pseudonym Clemens Parma, he wrote a number of fairy tales, poems and legends, often originating from his native region, including ‘Märchenreise ins Sudetenland’/‘Fairytale Journey to the Sudetenland’ (1967), ‘Neue Rübezahl-Geschichten’/‘New Rübezahl Stories’ (1973) and ‘Schlesische Märchen’/‘Silesian Fairytales’ (1979). Many of his children’s books were illustrated by his wife, including ‘Pitt und das verzauberte Fahrrad/‘Pitt and the Enchanted Bicycle’ (1963), ‘Zotti der Bär’/‘Zotti the Bear’ (1966) and ‘Der fliegende Teppich’/‘The Flying Carpet’ (1968).

In 1963, Menzel won first prize for his book ‘Die Buben am Hammersee’ /‘The Lads from Hammersee’ in the competition for the best children’s book organized by the Federal Ministry for Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims. He also applied his creative talent to radio, television and the theatre. In 1950, together with Josef Mühlberger, he won the A. Stifter Foundation competition for best drama. Menzel’s play ‘Rübezahl’ (about the spirit of the Sudeten Mountains), was produced by the Schauspiel-Studio in Iserlohn and performed in 43 German cities.

Menzel only really began to mine his memory in his works from the 1970s, first of all in his autobiography ‘Liebe zu Böhmen’/‘A Love of Bohemia’ (1973), and then in the trilogy comprised of ‘Die Tannhofs: Als Böhmen noch bei Österreich war’/‘The Tannhofs: When Bohemia was still part of Austria’ (1974), ‘Der Pulverturm’ /‘The Powder Tower’ (1977) and ‘Die Sieger’/‘The Victors’ (1981), which constitute the pinnacle of his literary work.

Against the backdrop of the fate of one family, he described the wild changes which took place in Central Europe in the twentieth century and fully confessed his admiration for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. After completing the trilogy, he returned to sports in the early 1980s and rounded off his rich creative career with profiles of the leading German football players of the time, in the ‘Sporting Greats’ series, including Toni Schumacher (1983) and Karl-Heinz Förster (1983).

Marriages

Roderich Menzel married four times. His wives were:

I. Anna Maria ‘Bucky’ Rabl (1908-1953), a native on Innsbruck and an enthusiastic tennis player and downhill skier who often accompanied Menzel on his trips around the world. They married on 11 February 1931 in Innsbruck. They divorced in 1937 and she later Josef, Baron von Colloredo-Mansfeld. Her daughter, Kristina Colloredo-Mansfeld, owns Opočno Castle in the Czech Republic.

II. Erika Franziska Josefa Wurdinger (b. 1914). She experienced tragedy when Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia after World War Two and her father was murdered. They married on 18 January 1938 in Saaz an der Eger and had two sons: Michael and Christian. They later divorced.

III. Gerda. They had two daughters: Renate and Carola. They later divorced.

IV. Johanna Sengler (1924), an illustrator and graphic artist who exhibited her work worldwide, including in the USA, Sri Lanka, the Netherlands and Switzerland). In 1972, she founded an art school for children, later also for adult. They married on 12 December 1952 and divorced in 1970. They had one son: Peter.

In spring 1983, Roderich Menzel was injured in an automobile accident from which he never fully recovered. He died on 17 October 1987 in a hospital in Munich, Germany, at the age of 80.

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