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Erik Jensen
men and revive appreciation of the sport. Petzall essentially saw women as
instruments in fostering proper spectatorship. Working from the prevalent assumption
at the time that primarily working-class men attended bouts and that they
caused the disruptions, Petzall claimed that women would tame these unruly fans:
“The very presence of the woman gives our sport the proper dignity, for her
presence will contribute greatly to the disciplining of the male public.” 84 Greater
attendance by women would not just make an evening at the fights more decorous,
however. Petzall further implied that female spectatorship could change the
nature of the sport itself. He noted that the introduction by the Verein Deutscher
Faustkämpfer (Association of German Fistfighters) of the six-ounce glove and soft
bandaging at all national fights had reduced the number of knockouts and focused
attention more on the technical prowess of the fighters. He estimated that this
development would lead even more women to attend matches. This suggested the
possibility that boxing federations would, in turn, respond to increased female
spectatorship with further reforms in this direction – a gradual and market-driven
feminization of boxing.
Petzall returned to the theme of class at the end of his piece with a direct appeal
to the Bildungsbürgertum (the educated upper and middle classes) among male
boxing fans:
We desperately need women from precisely this social background [educated professional
classes]. Therefore we must try by all means to win her for us. To our followers
let it be said: bring your wives with you to the fights. They will and must learn to love
our sport, the most beautiful that there is. 85
This article served the larger project of many boxing officials in Weimar Germany
to attract and groom a proper spectatorship for the sport. In Petzall’s estimation,
the presence of women not only would subdue the unruly fans that he attributed
to the working classes, but also would gradually replace them with members of
the professional classes, Petzall’s ideal audience.
Petzall’s article certainly provided one of the most explicit calls for a more
refined spectatorship at boxing matches, but far from the only one. His voice
joined a whole chorus of commentators who criticized the conduct and composition
of boxing crowds throughout the 1920s. In a similar manner to the “taste
professionals” that Leora Auslander describes in her history of furniture design in
France, these commentators saw themselves as both able and obligated to shape
the behavior of a growing group of sports consumers. 86 Although the criticisms
of these commentators often varied significantly from one another, they shared a
basic agenda that sought to solidify boxing’s standing as a serious sport. These
critics generally wished to purge the arena of its carnivalesque atmosphere, which
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