Albert Olbrechts

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Albert Olbrechts at the age of 99 (2014)

Albert Georges Marie Ghislain Olbrechts (born February 4, 1915 in Croydon ( London ); † December 27, 2018 in Bruchhausen ) was a German athlete and entrepreneur. Until his death he was the oldest male resident of Ettlingen .

Life

Albert Olbrechts was born during the First World War , he grew up in Mechelen, Belgium and was raised Catholic . After graduating from high school in 1935, Albert attended the Horticultural School from 1936 to 1939, graduating as a horticultural architect .

Before the Second World War , Olbrechts was drafted into the military, was taken prisoner during the German invasion of Belgium in 1940 and, as a Flemish, was released after three weeks. In 1941 the staunch anti-Bolshevik volunteered for the Flemish Legion , a unit of the Waffen SS . He fought on the Eastern Front for a few weeks and took part in Hitler's campaign against the Soviet Union before he was wounded and taken to a hospital in Riga . At the end of the war he went into hiding. For his participation in the Flemish Legion, Olbrechts was sentenced to death in absentia in Belgium in 1946. The death sentence was overturned twenty years later.

After the war he worked as a groom in a women's convent. A chance acquaintance with an American chaplain helped him to a caretaker position. Thanks to his good knowledge of the English language, he found a job as a civilian with an airlift unit in Frankfurt , where he loaded the “ raisin bombers ” who supplied the Berlin residents affected by the Russian blockade with food. As a member of the so-called "pachyderms" of the American Labor Service , he came to Ettlingen as a site manager in the early 1950s .

In 1963, Olbrechts founded the travel agency "Jumbo Reisen" in Ettlingen, which he ran until 2006. In 1973 he moved with his second wife Hildegard to the Bruchhausen district , where he lived until the end. Olbrechts died around five weeks before his 104th birthday and was buried in the Ettlingen city cemetery.

Sporting activity

Albert Olbrechts had been a runner since he was 57 . He had over a thousand runs in over 20 countries, including 15 times over 100-kilometer routes, 18 marathons , 75 half-marathons and 803 runs over ten kilometers. He also took part in the European and World Championships for seniors and won 14 gold medals, six silver medals, four bronze medals at the World Cup and seven gold, four silver and one bronze medals at the European Championships. His last sporting challenge at the age of 97 was taking part in the Senior European Championship in Zittau, Saxony . In 2008 he was still a participant in races, for example the Turmberglauf in Durlach . Olbrechts himself described the ten-kilometer run over the Great Wall of China in 2001 at the age of 86 as the highlight of his sports career .

The city ​​of Ettlingen has him to thank for the expansion of the Albgau Stadium, for which he volunteered to handcraft all 5,500 steps of the opposite stand in the 1970s. With this campaign he achieved a high level of awareness. In addition, in the 1980s and 1990s he organized numerous relay races on a voluntary basis in the various partner cities of Ettlingen.

Honors

  • 1980: Golden Sibyl Valley from the city ​​of Ettlingen
  • 1980: Letter of honor from the city of Ettlingen
  • Silver Lauerturm of the city of Ettlingen (ten times, most recently 2012)

literature

  • Dorothee LeMaire: "He runs and runs and runs ...": 100 years of Albert Olbrechts , in: 365 ° Ettlingen 2015 , published by the city of Ettlingen, Ettlingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-928756-25-9 , pp. 24-27 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d biography at Laufreport.de by Johann Till, February 2015, accessed on January 1, 2019
  2. ↑ a b c d Andreas Kleber: Albert Olbrechts is Ettlingen's oldest resident. In: Baden's latest news. February 4, 2018, accessed January 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Christoph Biermann , Bernd Sautter: Why did this man build a football stadium by himself? Something better than the war , 11 friends , March 22, 2016
  4. ↑ Press releases City of Ettlingen: Silver towers and medals of honor. March 13, 2012, accessed January 1, 2019 .


personal data
SURNAME Olbrechts, Albert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olbrechts, Albert Georges Marie Ghislain (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German athlete and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH London -Croydon
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 2018
Place of death Bruchhausen (Ettlingen)