Ernst Bauer (basketball official)

Ernst Bauer (* 1926 ; † April 14, 2005 in Bad Kreuznach ) was a German basketball official . He is considered a pioneer of German basketball.

career

Bauer was inspired by the sport teacher and basketball pioneer Hermann Niebuhr at Bad Kreuznach's Hindenburg high school  . During the Second World War , Bauer was drafted into the Reich Labor Service at the age of 17, he was a marine from 1944, was taken prisoner shortly before the end of the war, and was able to return to Bad Kreuznach in September 1945. He played at VfL in 1848 Bad Kreuznach , in 1947 Bauer lived in Roßdorf when the "Society for the Promotion of Basketball", the forerunner of the German Basketball Federation (DBB), was founded.

In 1946, Bauer  began studying chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz . At the university he introduced his fellow students to basketball, led practice units, played himself and was a referee. As a player, he made the leap to the student national team, for which he played six international matches.

From 1947 to 1940, Bauer headed the basketball department at VfL Bad Kreuznach. On June 1, 1949, Bauer took over from Günther Steiger as chairman of the “Basketball Department of the Rhineland Sports Association”, which was founded on May 1 of the same year. At the end of August 1949, Bauer was elected chairman at the founding meeting of the "Southwest German Basketball Association in the Rhineland Sports Association". At the end of October 1950, the association was renamed the Rhineland-Palatinate Basketball Association (BVRP), and Bauer remained in the office of chairman even after the name change. Until 1953 he led the fortunes of the BVRP as chairman and was one of the founding members of the German Basketball Federation on October 1, 1949 in Düsseldorf. In the following years he worked as a youth warden at DBB and was a member of the DBB legal committee as an assessor.

At the end of July / beginning of August 1951, Bauer led the organization of an international youth meeting. As part of this event, the German girls' basketball championships were held, and the girls from his club, VfL Bad Kreuznach, won the title. He took part in trips abroad to France and Italy  , where there were basketball  friendship games by student teams, and organized trips to Switzerland , Spain and France for the Mainz student selection in order to compete with teams in friendly games.

He completed his studies with a doctorate in chemistry, then worked for two years at the Institute for Organic Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University before he took a position at the BASF Group in Ludwigshafen and thus left Mainz, where the spread of basketball was crucial had been involved. When he moved to Ludwigshafen, he joined USC Heidelberg , where he initially worked as a player and later also as a coach for the USC men and women. In 1965 and 1966, Bauer held the position of head of the USC basketball division. With the old men’s team from Heidelberg, Bauer became German champions in the Senior II competition class.

In 1968 he returned to Bad Kreuznach, a year earlier he won the German championship in senior class III with the VfL team. In 1968 and 1969 the success was repeated. In the 1970/71 season he coached the Bad Kreuznach men's team during the games in collaboration with player- coach Rudolf Anheuser . From 1975 he held this office again, until 1978 in collaboration with Manfred Schitthof as a player- coach .

As part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the basketball department of VfL Bad Kreuznach, which Bauer had helped shape, he was awarded the Golden Badge of Honor of the German Basketball Federation. He later became involved in senior basketball competitions and competitions and continued to play basketball himself at an advanced age.

Bauer died on April 14, 2005 in Bad Kreuznach, the obituary of the German Basketball Federation said that German basketball had lost one of its pioneers.

swell

• [1]
• [2]

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b} DBB mourns. German Basketball Association, accessed on January 12, 2019 . 
2. ↑ The “basketball” phenomenon: Invention - enthusiasm - dissemination. German Basketball Association, accessed January 12, 2019 .