Joan Gamper

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Joan Gamper (1896)

Hans Max "Joan" Gamper (born November 22, 1877 in Winterthur , † July 30, 1930 in Barcelona ) was a Swiss athlete , businessman , football pioneer , player and official as well as co-founder of FC Zurich and founder of FC Barcelona .

Life

Beginnings in Switzerland

Joan Gamper (1910)

Hans Gamper was born in Winterthur as one of five children . After his mother died of tuberculosis, the family moved to their father's hometown, Zurich . The difficult family situation brought him to sport.

Gamper felt comfortable in every sport. He won cycling competitions as well as races in athletics . He played rugby , tennis , golf and soccer . Football was also the sport that particularly excited him. He joined FC Excelsior in 1894 and two years later co-founded FC Zurich , where he played from 1896 to 1897 and was the first captain in club history. Gamper was also a so-called foreign member of FC Winterthur and played a game against FC St. Gallen for the club on March 13, 1897 .

Via Lyon to Barcelona

From the autumn of 1897, Hans Gamper stayed in Lyon , where he was active as a rugby player for FC Lyon . In October 1898, at the request of his uncle Emili Gaissert, who lived in the Catalan capital, he moved to Barcelona. There Gamper learned Catalan and Spanish and from then on called himself Joan - the Catalan version of his first name Hans or its long form Johannes . In connection with his late mother, he also gave Gamper Haessig as his family name.

As an accountant, he found work at Crédit Lyonnais , the Sarria Railway Company, as chief accountant and as a sports columnist. He also worked for two Swiss newspapers and helped publish the magazine Los Deportes . But he was also active in the sugar and coffee trade. He joined the local Swiss Evangelical Church and started playing football with other Protestants from the community in the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district .

Foundation of FC Barcelona

After about a year he had the idea of ​​founding his own football club and looked for interested parties via a newspaper ad in Los Deportes . In the end, the club was founded by 36 - exclusively Protestant  - members and the name FC Barcelona was chosen. Gamper also introduced the club colors blue and red, but it is disputed whether he took over the colors from his parent club FC Excelsior Zurich (where he played himself) or was inspired by the colors of FC Basel .

Joan Gamper on the Field (1902)

Gamper became the first captain of FC Barcelona, ​​for whom he scored 120 goals in 51 games between 1899 and 1903. He was one of the best football players of his time and still holds the record for the most goals in a game at FC Barcelona. He scored nine goals in three games between 1901 and 1903.

Presidencies at FC Barcelona

Since the Spanish constitution of the time only allowed Catholicism as a religion, many players had to leave the club, including Gamper.

Gamper also felt a bond with the Freemasons . It was not until 1908 that he was able to return to FC Barcelona and was elected president. One of the reasons was probably the marriage to a strictly Catholic Swiss woman.

Gamper accepted the position as a board member. From 1908 to 1913 (with the exception of the interval from October 14, 1909 to November 17, 1910) he was now president of the association. Gamper achieved the club's financial rescue and initiated the construction of the first stadium of their own. But Gamper did not forget to fight for his goals against the resistance of the authorities and was repeatedly charged for this.

From June 17, 1917 to June 19, 1919 he was again the club's president.

On June 14, 1925, a friendly match was organized in honor of the Catalan folk choir Orfeó Català . 14,000 spectators booed the Spanish national anthem and applauded the British anthem. Gamper, who was club president again at that time, was forced to resign and expelled from the country for three months for supporting " Catalanism ", and the stadium was closed for half a year. In addition, Gamper was banned from any contact with FC Barcelona, ​​which hit him hard as he saw his life's work as destroyed.

death

As a result of the Great Depression in 1929, Gamper lost all of his fortune. Plagued by depression, he shot himself to death on July 30, 1930 at the age of 52 in his home at Carrer de Girona No. 4 in Barcelona. Thousands followed the funeral procession in the Cementiri de Montjuïc cemetery in Barcelona.

Others

Every year in August, shortly before the start of the Primera División, FC Barcelona organizes a friendly game for the Joan Gamper Trophy in Camp Nou in honor of Gampers . From 1966 to 1996 the event was played as Torneig Joan Gamper (Catalan for Joan Gamper tournament ) in tournament mode with four teams. A team has been invited as an opponent since 1997.

In 2016, Gamperstrasse in Zurich-Aussersihl was dedicated to him and given a corresponding street sign.

Web links

Commons : Joan Gamper  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of FC Barcelona . Official website of the Spanish football club
  2. ↑ a b Biography of Hans Gampers ( memento of the original from October 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on fcbarcelona.com @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fcbarcelona.com
  3. ↑ Kai Jerzö: A groundbreaking find in the FCW archive . In: The Landbote . Winterthur October 18, 2014, p. 7 ( fcwinterthur1896.com [accessed December 28, 2017]).
  4. ↑ Schweizer Sportblatt , Volume 1 (1898), Issue 2, p. 2
  5. ↑ Hans Gamper - FC Winterthur ( Memento from October 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Barça or The Art of Beautiful Play, Verlag Die Werkstatt GmbH, Göttingen 2010, page 21
  7. ^ Bz Basel : Didn't Hans Gamper think of Basel at all when founding FC Barcelona? , July 12, 2012
  8. ↑ Basler Zeitung on the myth of the red-blue color scheme ( Memento from February 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Dietrich Schulze Marmeling, Barça or the art of the beautiful game, published by The Workshop GmbH, Göttingen 2010; Page 26
  10. ↑ a b FCBarcelona.cat: JOAN GAMPER ( Memento of the original from April 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fcbarcelona.com
  11. ↑ FCBarcelona.cat: FC Barcelona Records ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.fcbarcelona.com
  12. ↑ Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Barça or The Art of Beautiful Play, Verlag Die Werkstatt GmbH, Göttingen 2010, page 30
  13. ^ Christian Eberle: Protestant - Catalan - Icon. Joan Gamper: founding father of FC Barcelona, ​​in: Markwart Herzog (ed.), Memorial culture in football. Media, rituals and practices of remembering, commemorating and forgetting. Stuttgart 2013. p. 122.
  14. ↑ Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Barça or The Art of Beautiful Play, Verlag Die Werkstatt GmbH, Göttingen 2010, page 31
  15. ^ Christian Eberle: Protestant - Catalan - Icon. Joan Gamper: founding father of FC Barcelona, ​​in: Markwart Herzog (ed.), Memorial culture in football. Media, rituals and practices of remembering, commemorating and forgetting. Stuttgart 2013. p. 123.
  16. ^ Christian Eberle: Protestant - Catalan - Icon. Joan Gamper: founding father of FC Barcelona, ​​in: Markwart Herzog (ed.), Memorial culture in football. Media, rituals and practices of remembering, commemorating and forgetting. Stuttgart 2013. p. 126.
  17. ↑ Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling, Barça or The Art of Beautiful Play, Verlag Die Werkstatt GmbH, Göttingen 2010, page 41
  18. ↑ Gamperstrasse in Zurich-Aussersihl is dedicated to Hans Gamper (stadt-zuerich.ch, accessed February 8, 2019)
personal data
SURNAME Gamper, Joan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gamper, Hans Max (full name); Gamper, Hans; Gamper Haessig, Joan; Gamper Haessig, Hans; Gamper Haessig, Hans Max
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss football player, football official and founder of FC Barcelona
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Winterthur , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1930
Place of death Barcelona