Great-grandson of 'Hitler's teacher', at Roland Garros: his story

Thiago Seyboth Wild He left a mark on this latest Roland Garros, both for what he did on the pitch and off it. For now, the 23-year-old Brazilian has the merit of being the first player born after 2000 to win an ATP title, in the contest that took place in Santiago de Chile in 2020. In the following years he could not transcend mostly on the circuit, but a few days ago he returned to the fore thanks to the impact of having eliminated Russian Daniil Medvedev in the first round in five sets, in his condition of 172nd in the ranking and coming from the classification.

After that blow against the No. 2 in the world, the player who usually trains with the Argentine Sebastián Gutiérrez and his compatriot Duda Motas finally fell in the third round against the Japanese Yoshihito Nishioka, rival this Monday of the Argentine Tomás Etcheverry. But beyond his tennis campaign, the name of Seyboth Wild began to make headlines in the Bois de Boulogne for other reasons. One of them points to a pending trial for domestic and psychological violence against his ex-partner, the influencer Thayane Lima, with whom he was married for a year and eight months. The player was asked about this situation after his victory over Medvedev and he responded angrily. “I don’t think it’s a topic we should talk about here. I don’t think it’s a question you should ask anyone. I don’t think it’s up to you to decide if it’s the place to talk about it,” he snapped at the German journalist Jannik Schneider, later threatened by representatives of the Brazilian player.

history with hitler

It is a very dark facet of the tennis player’s life, a chapter that has not yet closed. In this sense, the Brazilian outlet O Globo published messages in which Seyboth Wild spoke inappropriately against his ex-partner, with very harsh expressions against his person. These chats are part of the investigation into the alleged gender violence for which the Brazilian was accused. A situation that is intermingled with another that is curious and controversial, which refers to his family past: after his fall in front of Nishioka, O Globo revealed that Seyboth Wild would be the great-grandson of “Hitler’s teacher”. To confirm this, the Brazilian media is based on some WhatsApp messages that the tennis player exchanged with his ex-partner.

In a conversation in October 2019, she addresses him in the following terms: “Your mother doesn’t like homosexuals, blacks and Jews, is that it?”. To which the tennis player answered clearly: “Yes.” He had no qualms about acknowledging his family’s ideology: “My family on my mother’s side is Nazi. Literally. My great-grandfather, the father of my mother’s father, was the ancestor of Hitler.” Seyboth Wild demonstrated this with photographs in which his ancestor appeared together with the leader of Nazi Germany. According to Thiago, it was his great-grandfather who brought Hitler from Austria and “taught him life.”

Of course: the winner of Medvedev at Roland Garros was not proud of the thought of his relatives and, precisely for this reason, he chose to notify what would later be his partner of what awaited him: “What am I going to do, it’s history . I thought that if I told you tomorrow you would leave, so I preferred to tell you now, because if you wanted to, I would understand.

Who could be the player’s great-grandfather? The newspaper Marca, from Spain, describes: “The published WhatsApp image does not have a great resolution. However, the figure greeted by the future Führer bears a certain resemblance to those that remain of Anton Drexler (1884-1942). This had been the founder of the DAP (German Workers Party) -actually a small political group with few followers-, with a warmongering, far-right and anti-Semitic ideology, and in 1919 he was its president ”.

At Roland Garros, Seyboth Wild tried to stop the tsunami of information that was coming out about him, during a tournament that gave him multiple emotions. “Given some published articles and posts, I want to clarify that the ongoing processes in Brazil, as well as a criminal proceeding in which I appear as a victim, are under secrecy. This means that I cannot make statements, comments or expose conversations, ”he wrote in a statement addressed to O Globo.

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