Aristocrat, German tennis player. The third of the seven sons of Burchard Baron (Freiherr) von Cramm, by his marriage to Jutta Countess (Gräfin) von Steinberg, Cramm was born at the family estate near Nettlingen, Lower Saxony, Germany and grew up in one of their castles in Brüggen (Leine). A younger brother, Wilhelm-Ernst Freiherr von Cramm (1917–1996), was a German officer who was highly decorated during the Second World War, and who after the war was leader of the German Party, a conservative German political party. In 1932, Cramm earned a place in the German Davis Cup team and won the first of four straight German national tennis championships. During this time he also teamed up with Hilde Krahwinkel to win the 1933 Mixed Doubles title at Wimbledon. Noted for his gentlemanly conduct and fair play, he gained the admiration and respect of his fellow tennis players. He earned his first individual Grand Slam title in 1934, winning the French Open. His victory made him a national hero in his native Germany; however, it was by chance that he won just after Adolf Hitler had come to power. The handsome, blond Gottfried von Cramm fitted perfectly the Aryan race image of a Nazi ideology that put pressure on all German athletes to be superior. However, Cramm steadfastly refused to be a tool for Nazi propaganda. Germany effectively lost its 1935 Davis Cup Interzone Final against the US when Cramm refused to take a match point in the deciding game, by notifying the umpire that the ball had tipped his racket, and thus calling a point against himself, although no one had witnessed the error. For three straight years Cramm was the men's singles runner-up at the Wimbledon Championships, losing memorable matches in the final to England's Fred Perry in 1935 and again in 1936. The following year he lost in the final to American Don Budge, both at Wimbledon and at the U.S. Open. In 1935, he was beaten in the French Open final by Perry, but turned the tables the following year and defeated Perry, gaining his second French championship. In an attempt to get Cramm to be more cooperative ideologically, the Nazi government punished his previous unwillingness by not allowing him to compete in the 1937 French championship, even though he was the defending champion. Despite his Grand Slam play, Gottfried von Cramm is most remembered in England for his deciding match against Don Budge during the 1937 Davis Cup. He was ahead 4–1 in the final set when Budge launched a comeback, eventually winning 8–6 in a match considered by many as the greatest battle in the annals of Davis Cup play and one of the pre-eminent matches in all of tennis history. In a later interview, Budge said that Cramm had received a phone call from Hitler minutes before the match started and had come out pale and serious and had played each point as though his life depended on winning. Others say that Budge believed a tale invented by Teddy Tinling (at the time the "call boy" who ushered players onto the Centre Court at Wimbledon) that Hitler had telephoned Cramm before the match. Gottfried von Cramm married twice, 1st to Baroness Elisabeth "Lisa" von Dobeneck (1912–1975), a daughter of Robert, Baron von Dobeneck and his wife, the former Maria Hagen, a granddaughter of the Jewish banker Louis Hagen. They married on 1 September 1930 and divorced in 1937. Lisa von Cramm later married the German ice-hockey star Gustav Jaenecke. 2nd to Barbara Hutton, the American socialite and an heiress to the Woolworth five-and-dime fortune. The couple married in 1955 and divorced in 1959. He had married her in order to "help her through substance abuse and depression but was unable to help her in the end. While on a business trip, Cramm and his driver were killed in an automobile accident near Cairo, Egypt, in 1976, when the baron's car collided with a truck.