Franz Stampfl - Second World War

Second World War

During World War II Stampfl taught physical education at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Barnet (then holders of the Public Schools Challenge Cup for athletics) from February to July 1940, when he was suddenly interned as an enemy alien. He was transported to Canada and then Australia. He went on hunger strike to protest at his confinement.

Early one June morning in 1940, he was shipped to Australia on the liner ship Arandora Star with a host of other prisoners of war. In the middle of the North Sea, a German U-boat torpedoed the ship; and within thirty minutes amid screams of fear, the ship was flooded with water and sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic. To survive, Stampfl forced a steel plate aside to get to the surface and then jumped into the freezing cold, oil-slicked sea. For eight hours he swam, wading off shock from the cold and struggling to keep his head above the water, before a rescue boat sighted him.

Jenkins observed that, under the relevant order, even friendly Germans and Austrians were arrested. He gave the date of Stampfl's detention as 2 July 1940, but, as this was the day that the Arandora Star (see below) was attacked, it was probably slightly earlier. The decision to arrest aliens was taken on 18 June 1940 He was one of 868 survivors when the liner SS Arandora Star, carrying 1,190 deportees, was torpedoed en route to Canada. Among those who lost their lives were the former Italian head chefs of London's Savoy and Ritz Hotels.

Hundreds died in the disaster, but those who survived were shipped back to Britain, interned and shipped once again to Australia. There, Stampfl was sent to an internment camp in Hay, and to ease the desperation plaguing the prisoners he organised athletics, boxing, wrestling and football matches. 'It was not just a job for me,' he said. 'It was an inner desire to survive and remain sane for myself and my friends in camp.' When the war ended, Stampfl married an Australian woman he'd met in Melbourne and moved back to London. Although he suffered terribly over the previous years and had trouble sleeping under linen or far from an open window because of his long confinement, he still admired the English for their love of amateur sport, and felt their athletes could use his help. He returned to Britain in 1946 to continue athletics coaching. He reconnected with amateur officials and arranged for a number of coaching posts, including part-time ones at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Still he was not asked to aid the British Olympic team in 1952 – evidence that amateur officials never brought him fully into their fold because he was an outsider.

In 1952 the John Fisher School (Purley) won the Public Schools Challenge Cup for athletics, held at the White City Stadium. Smaller than most of the 203 top schools that entered the competition that year, John Fisher's victory caused controversy. Previously, schools entered only a limited number of individual athletes and therefore scored few points. However, thanks to the determination of Fr. McLean and the school's athletics coach, Herr Franz Stampfl, John Fisher entered a full athletics squad who outscored every school, across the full range of track and field disciplines, to win the trophy by the widest ever winning margin. There was much debate about the ethics of one school 'sweeping the board' in such a manner. In 1953 the feat was repeated, this time by an even greater winning margin - and again the opposition cried "foul"! The following year the championship took place and yet again John Fisher boys out-performed the opposition. However, the organisers decided to withdraw the Challenge Cup and only reward individual performances. The school was therefore denied a hat-trick of wins! Franz Stampfl, who worked at John Fisher school as athletics coach from 1950 – 1955, emigrated to Australia, training the Australian Squad in preparation for the Melbourne Olympic Games. Of particular note is that he coached Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to break the four minute mile in May 1954. Franz Stampfl gained a reputation as one of the world's leading athletics coaches and, under his guidance, for a few short years in the early 1950s John Fisher School was to dominate schoolboy athletics