Dora Ratjen

Dora Ratjen

Heinrich Ratjen (20 November 1918 – 22 April 2008), born Dora Ratjen, was a German athlete who competed for Germany in the women's high jump at the 1936 Summer Olympics at Berlin, finishing fourth, but was later determined to be male and/or intersex. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Dora Ratjen has received more than 357,688 page views. His biography is available in 19 different languages on Wikipedia. Dora Ratjen is the 53rd most popular athlete (down from 28th in 2019), the 2,019th most popular biography from Germany and the 3rd most popular German Athlete.

Dora Ratjen, also known as Heinrich Ratjen, was a German athlete who is most famous for her controversial participation in the women's high jump event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Ratjen was later revealed to be a male athlete who had been forced to compete as a woman by the Nazi government in order to promote their ideology of Aryan superiority. The incident remains a notable example of the use of sports for political propaganda, and Ratjen's story is often cited as an example of the exploitation and mistreatment of athletes under totalitarian regimes.