Carl Koppehel

Carl Koppehel (* 16th November 1890 in Berlin ; † 28. June 1975 ) was a German football referee , official and author .

career

Beginnings and work including the Weimar Republic

Koppehel, born in Berlin-Kreuzberg, grew up close to Tempelhofer Feld, the center of Berlin football at the time. He ran after football at a young age and his talent for organization and administration was shown early at Hubertus 05 - later absorbed in Schöneberger BSC Kickers 1900 - through his "sideline work" as chairman and cashier, as well as his work in the youth department. Acting as a footballer in goal and as a middle runner, Koppehel also turned to refereeing during this time. From 1909 he worked as a rule expert in the administration of the Association of Brandenburg Ball Game Clubs (VBB) . After completing his apprenticeship as a typesetter and book printer, he started a career as a sports journalist while working as an official.

On Christmas Eve 1914 he was called up for World War I as a soldier, from which he was released back home in 1916 due to illness. He immediately became active again at the association and for two years accompanied the office of chairman of the main and gaming committee in Berlin. During this time he also resumed the arbitration work, but now with Minerva, where he also became chairman. As the gaming committee chairman of the VBB (1917-19), a close relationship developed with Felix Linnemann , who led the VBB as the association's chairman from 1918 to 1920.

On November 1, 1918, he founded the “Berlin Referee Newspaper (BSZ)” in the Reich capital. From June 1919 the BSZ was published under the new name "German Referee Gazette (DSZ)" as the official SR organ of the DFB. Carl Koppehel acted as editor in charge. In December 1920 he laid down his editorial activities; as a freelance writer he remained connected to the paper.

Until 1924 he pursued his passion as a referee. He directed his first game at DFB level in 1917 with the encounter between southern Germany and central Germany. In 1920 he took part in an international tournament in Gothenburg. Koppehel was used as a referee in three international matches : 1921 in St. Gallen in the game between Switzerland and Austria, in 1922 in Budapest in the game between Hungary and Austria and finally in 1923 in Lemberg in the third international game under his direction when Poland played against Romania. Then he ended his active referee career due to time constraints.

During the Weimar Republic , Koppehel was one of the busiest football organizers and bureaucrats who proved to be a committed lobbyist for the football associations. After giving up his management activity at VBB, he restructured the finances of Tennis Borussia Berlin as a full-time manager from August 1926 .

Koppehel became known to a larger reading community in the 1920s for his extensive football journalism work. The focus of his work was on his variously published contributions to questions of rules (offside rule from 1925) and elaborations for the administrative work of associations and clubs (tax legislation). He took advantage of this initial specialization to get into “normal football journalism”. From the mid-1920s onwards he wrote regularly reports and match reports on the most important football matches in Germany and on the continent. He was the main editor of the magazine "Rasensport" and author of the Berlin "Football Week". At the end of the 1920s, Koppehel had risen to the ranks of the most famous football journalists in the republic. Together with Walther Bensemann (table football), Eugen Seybold , Franz Richard (football), Ernst Werner (football week) and Willy Meisl (Vossische Zeitung), Carl Koppehel laid down the direction of German football journalism in long articles.

On October 1, 1931, Koppehel's German referee newspaper merged with the DFB referee newspaper, which had been published since 1926. From then on he acted as editor-in-chief of the sole official body of referees of the DFB. At the end of 1932, together with Reich trainer Otto Nerz , he brought out his greatest print success to date when he published the book “Kampf um den Ball”, which was reprinted several times.

As early as 2001, Eggers noted in his publication “Football in the Weimar Republic” that the foreign policy of the Weimar Republic recognized the political value of international football comparisons at an early stage, promoted it and used it at the same time. The double pass between football and foreign policy therefore contradicts official DFB representations in which the DFB repeatedly certified that it was absolutely independent for its international contacts. It exposes the assessment of the DFB historian Koppehel that German football has always stayed away from politics as a naive claim at best.

Work in the time of National Socialism

In the first months after the Nazis came to power, Koppehel held back noticeably. According to Havemann, he felt “great sympathy for the turnaround that began when Hitler came to power.” In fact, the then 42-year-old quickly adapted to the new balance of power. In 1934 Koppehel was brought into the DFB office; he quickly became the "right hand of the DFB chairman Felix Linnemann". Koppehel even benefited from the "second synchronization" of the DFB (Nils Havemann) after 1936. Together with Dr. From 1937 onwards, Georg Xandry took over the administration of German football in Linnemann's absence. Continuing to look after the DSZ, in 1937 he was also the "Reich Arbitrator Chairman", to whom the entire referee was subordinate. In February 1937 he succeeded the press chief of the specialist office for football, supervising and organizing all of the office's printed matter. As the “leading employee of Linnemann in matters of club practice”, he edited and wrote football yearbooks and wrote a huge number of specialist texts on refereeing and administrative work in the clubs.

He always defended the Führer principle. After the beginning of the Second World War, Koppehel wrote texts that glorified the war and propagated the Nazi ideology. After the Reichssportführer issued the instruction to classify sport in total warfare, Koppehel appealed to his sports comrades, for example: “Everyone must be fanatic about what you ask of him because you have to demand it wherever it is is and wherever he is, to be filled with a passionate heart and all will. "

He also represented the vocabulary of his time in the yearbooks and followed the directives from the Reich Ministry for Propaganda with regard to the " Damnatio memoriae " when he omitted the championship title of Hakoah Vienna in a text about Austrian football history in 1939 because it was purely Jewish Elf had acted. He therefore supported this system, even if “only” as a technocrat and he has always praised the “orderly conditions” in football since 1933. Nevertheless, according to Eggers, it must be differentiated and it must be stated that Koppehel is not one of the sharp ideologues like Guido von Mengden counted; the vast majority of articles from his pen related to the matter itself, to football.

In 2003, Hardy Grüne stated in his “History of Football in Germany”: “The fact that the DFB and its regional associations followed the swastika almost completely without resistance in 1933 can still be accepted in view of their conservative orientation and the politically explosive situation - so did many other institutions . [...] The fact that after 1945 they were innocent and claiming (and still doing so today) that they were instrumentalized by the Nazis and that they acted solely out of concern for the sport is nothing more than a distortion of history. Many large corporations have long acknowledged their deeds during the “millennial empire” and have undertaken to come to terms with their own history. The DFB, on the other hand, only had a thin essay written about the period 1933-45 in its commemorative publication on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, which was far from serious reappraisal: firstly, it was only accepted under public pressure, secondly, it was little of the football history well-versed experts in Olympic history, wrestling and swimming, Karl Adolf Scherer , and thirdly, he basically confirmed the fairy tale of the completely surprised functionary guard, who was almost overrun by the brown hordes, only 'did their best' and did theirs for the entire epoch Preserved 'independence'. In essence, it was a continuation of the thesis written by Carl Koppehel in 1954, “Between 1933 and 1949, only the letterhead changed”.

After the Second World War

Only three months after the "collapse", Koppehel worked again as a football official. In August 1945 he was appointed to the “Central Sports Committee” in Berlin to represent the footballers. He worked on this committee as a “press man” and “section technician”. From 1945 to 1950 he was the chairman of the games committee for Berlin football. After the end of the war, Koppehel was committed to the development of socialist sports structures in the east, but gave up his home in Kleinmachnow in 1950 and moved to Frankfurt am Main, where the (re) founded DFB was located. There he worked in 1950/51 as a member of the executive board. At the same time he brought the German Referee Newspaper back to life and published a new club guide. In 1951 he was appointed head of the "Office for Press and Propaganda" at the DFB. He proved himself, however, by the manner of his appearance - self-glorious and presumptuous demeanor; opinionated and choleric character; autocratic leadership style - as a wrong choice. In the field of football history, Koppehel shaped the history of German football like no other in the 15 years after the end of the Nazi regime with his numerous publications. In doing so, he formulated the fatal topos of excuse that he used from then on for the time of National Socialism. As early as 1950, he claimed in the DFB yearbook that the DFB and / or the Football Department had successfully defied the Nazis' attempts at usurpation in the “Zwischenreich”.

This crude view of things that he wrote down against his better judgment was finally condensed by Koppehel in his main work, "The History of German Football" (1954). On around 28 pages he dealt with the history of football in the Third Reich. Lorenz Peiffer and Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling record in their book “Hakenkreuz und rundes Leder” in the chapter “The Post-War Period” on the quasi-official chronicle of the DFB: “The word 'National Socialism' occurs exactly once in it. Koppehel, who was actively involved in the coordination as press officer, paints the image of an apolitical and immaculate association. Neither the DFB functionaries 'addresses of devotion to the new rulers, nor the exclusion of Jews from German football and the smashing of the workers' sports movement are mentioned. "

When the DFB celebrated its 75th anniversary in the Frankfurt Festspielhaus in 1975, keynote speaker Walter Jens also referred to the darker pages of the association's history. The aim of his lecture was “to remind the German Football Association that it has a history that does not only consist of balance sheets, not only of international matches, championships, clubs and leagues, but is a political history. A story that the DFB, one of the biggest opinion leaders in our country (perhaps the biggest), should finally come to terms with - by starting with the revocation of the thesis: Sport is an element that is far from politics in the Cloud Cuckoo Land. “Jens had encountered passages in the 1954“ History of German Football Sport ”by author Carl Koppehel. The fact that Koppehel celebrated the National Socialist takeover as progress for German football, but did not say a word about the victims of National Socialism, drove Jens to the barricades. His lecture was a political premiere in the post-1945 DFB. Until then, the unchallenged formula was that completely apolitical football had retained its independence during the years of Nazi rule, or as the sports reporter legend Rudi Michel brazenly put it in 2006: “The DFB performed brilliantly in the Third Reich the affair pulled. "

Until well into the 1970s, the DFB had its history of the years 1933–45 written by people who belonged to the camp of perpetrators and followers of National Socialism. The result was that the victims were missing from this story, while perpetrators and followers appeared in a mild to brilliant light.

Although Walter Jens' speech at the Frankfurt Schauspielhaus marked the beginning of the debate about the role of the DFB in the years of National Socialism from today's perspective, the topic should rest again for the next few years. The association declared the anniversary speech and its content to be virtually nonexistent. The "troublemaker" and "nest polluter" Walter Jens became a "person non grata" among the DFB superiors. His rehabilitation took place 31 years later.

The attempt to absolve his old employer, the DFB, of any cooperation during the Third Reich and to portray him as an autonomous sports association, also runs through the many other publications by Koppehel during this time. The examples of Koppehel's misunderstanding of history are legion. The undisputed bias with which he described the period between 1933 and 1945 becomes clearest in the transfiguration of his friend Felix Linnemann, who died in 1948. Linnemann's defense and justification run through all retrospectives.

In addition, Eggers denounces serious gaps in the history of Koppehel, which leave today's reader perplexed and concerned:

• Not a word about the anti-Semitic abuses of his co-author Otto Nerz in 1943,
• The persecution of the Jews completely excluded, not even mentioning the exclusion of the numerous Jewish footballers from the clubs or all the other persecuted workers in workers' sport, whom footballers in the denominational associations only mentioned in passing.

Eggers sums up: "Discrimination, persecution, imprisonment, extermination - all of that is missing".

But he also lists the declaration formulated by historian Nils Havemann to excuse Koppehel's historical policy. In Havemann's view, Koppehel's account from 1954 “corresponded to the general way the young Federal Republic of Germany dealt with the years of the Hitler dictatorship. The vast majority of the population refused to grapple with questions of individual guilt and responsibility; Regardless of the extent of their personal responsibility, people shied away from confrontation with the crimes in an act of collective repression because they found the memory of them stressful and humiliating. "

As a conclusion, Eggers zu Koppehel stated: “His achievements as a 'rule father' are undisputed, but these have largely been forgotten. Rather, his euphemistic work as a (biased) interpreter of German football history stands in the foreground, which cannot stand before history. Serious football historiography has long since exposed 'Koppehel' as a misrepresentation of history, so that today it has served its purpose as the most cited football book in Germany - and not only for the time of the Third Reich. "

Football historian Grüne describes the years 1948 to 1954 with the result: “Not only did the functionaries who were active during the Nazi era gradually return to leading positions and were sometimes awarded high honors for their 'services' - the same men also began with recording the history of the DFB or its regional associations for posterity. The best-known example is Carl Koppehel, football press attendant from 1937–45 and author of the 'Geschichte des Deutschen Fußballports' published in 1954, which has long been the most comprehensive account of the history of German football and something like the official chronicle of the DFB. The perpetrators cleaned up their own history and presented themselves as victims or sometimes even resistance fighters. This resulted in numerous legends about the 'immaculate and apolitical football' that have survived to this day. "

At Havemann you can read a milder assessment of the DFB officials. He writes that “among the representatives of football as a whole, personal ambition, status consciousness, fear for their own existence and the numerous advantages offered by commitment to National Socialist sports policy were a far greater motivation than an abstract worldview, a national consciousness or a patriotic sense of duty. Most of them refused to reflect on their own actions because a serious examination of their conscience would have required an opposite attitude to their own work, the abandonment of personal ambitions, the renunciation of the remaining comforts, even life-threatening resistance. The awareness of still belonging to the beneficiaries in the dreary and threatening everyday life of the war eased the self-deception of being involved in a supposedly great, 'national' goal. Against this background, it can be explained that people like Xandry, Bauwens, Koppehel, Stenzel or Herberger, who had little in common with the Nazis, mostly cooperated with the Reich Sports Leadership, the Foreign Office or the Reich Propaganda Ministry during the war years and thus contributed to it that the terrible machinery of war and annihilation could function smoothly for a long time. "

In 1958 the DFB press chief retired and in 1959 he moved from Frankfurt to Lindenfels in the Odenwald . He died in June 1975, five weeks after the 75th anniversary of the DFB.

Publications (selection)

• History of Berlin football , Berlin 1957.
• The referee in football , 8th edition, Frankfurt 1973.

literature

• Markwart Herzog (Hrsg.): Football at the time of National Socialism. Erik Eggers: Publicist-Journalist-Storyteller. The functionary and referee Carl Koppehel as a lesson in German football historiography. Verlag W. Kohlhammer. Stuttgart 2008. ISBN 978-3-17-020103-3 . Pp. 195-214.
• Lorenz Peiffer, Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling (ed.): Swastika and round leather. Football under National Socialism. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2008. ISBN 978-3-89533-598-3 .
• Nils Havemann: Football under the swastika. The DFB between sport, politics and commerce. Campus publishing house. Frankfurt / Main 2005. ISBN 3-593-37906-6 .
• Hardy Greens: 100 years of the German Championship. The history of football in Germany. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2003. ISBN 3-89533-410-3 .
• Erik Eggers: Football in the Weimar Republic. Agon Sportverlag. Kassel 2001. ISBN 3-89784-174-6 .

Web links

• Biographical information from: Andreas Bode: Football at the time of National Socialism: everyday life, media, arts, stars
• Entry at eu-football.info

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jürgen Bitter: Germany's football. The encyclopedia. FA Herbig. Munich 2008. ISBN 978-3-7766-2558-5 . P. 393
2. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 197
3. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 198
4. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 200
5. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 201
6. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 202
7. ^ Erik Eggers: Football in the Weimar Republic. P. 114
8. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 203
9. ↑ Lorenz Peiffer, Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling: swastika and round leather. P. 75
10. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 205
11. ↑ Hardy Greens: 100 Years of the German Championship. The history of football in Germany. P. 193
12. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 206
13. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 208
14. ↑ Lorenz Peiffer, Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling: swastika and round leather. P. 42
15. ↑ Lorenz Peiffer, Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling: swastika and round leather. Pp. 558/559
16. ↑ Lorenz Peiffer, Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling: swastika and round leather. P. 560
17. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 210
18. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 211
19. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. Pp. 211/212
20. ↑ Erik Eggers: Journalist-Journalist-Storyteller. P. 212
21. ↑ Hardy Greens: 100 Years of the German Championship. The history of football in Germany. P. 287
22. ^ Nils Havemann: Football under the swastika. The DFB between sport, politics and commerce. P. 259