Willie Jahn

Wilhelm ("Willi") Jahn (born 27 February 1889, date of death 1973) was a German track and field athlete who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics.

Biography

In 1912 he was eliminated in the first round of the 800 metres competition. Willi Jahn was a leader in the German Youth Movement (Wandervogel). As such he co-led the IWV (Jungwandervogel) for many years with Willie Jansen, participating at the famous 1913 Hohen Meissner meeting. As the Wandervogel movement was concerned with health and life reform for German youth, track and field became a central element of life in the organization, which led to Willi's ultimate appearance at the 1912 Olympics.

Besides track and field, Willi was very engaged in kayaking trips (Wanderpaddeln), another facet of the outdoors activities of the Wandervogel. A crucial element of the Wandervogel movement that shaped Willi's life was the rediscovery of German folk songs. Willi was an accomplished guitar and lute player, as well as a composer of songs in the german folkloristic style. His best known song "Laue Luft kommt blau geflossen" was to set music to the words by German poet Eichendorff. Other songs include "Wir wollen zu Land ausfahren" und "Aus feuchtem Grunde". A number of books that compile his compositions have been published.

Plans to run the family publishing business in Berlin were thwarted by World War II, which destroyed the art publishing business and the community newspaper. Wilhelm Jahn was the editor in chief of the genealogical journal Familie, Sippe, Volk in Berlin. He later served in Denmark as an Officer (Major) of the German Armed Forces and contracted tuberculosis in a British POW camp after the war. The family, which had been scattered due to the allied bombing of Berlin, reunited in a displaced people's camp in Ovelgönne in the late 1940s. He never fully recovered from tuberculosis and ultimately succumbed to it in 1973, in his new residence in Hannover-Kleefeld.

External links

• list of German athletes