Ernst Feja

Ernst Feja

To person
Date of birth	June 1, 1899
date of death	September 1, 1927
nation	Germany
discipline	Track cycling
Most important successes
Six days race 1926 : Breslau (with Piet van Kempen )

Ernst Feja (born June 1, 1899 in Breslau ; † September 1, 1927 in Zurich ) was a German track cyclist .

Ernst Feja was born the son of a railway official and learned the trade of an automobile fitter. After the First World War he became a professional cyclist. At the beginning of the 1920s, he began to participate in standing races , among others behind Christian Junggeburth and Werner Krüger . In 1926 he won the six-day race in his hometown of Breslau together with the Dutchman Piet van Kempen . In the same year he was fourth in the annual ranking behind Walter Sawall , Erich Möller and Karl Wittig .

At the end of August 1927 Feja won the “Golden Corner Prize” on the cycle race track in Cologne-Riehl . He then traveled to Zurich to make his Swiss debut in an international stand-up race on the Zurich-Oerlikon cycling track . While training on the concrete runway, he fell because the front wheel tire jumped off the rim and suffered fatal head injuries. Ernst Feja was the first cyclist to have a fatal accident on the Oerlikon railway.

His body was transported by train from Zurich to Wroclaw, where he was laid out in the Grüneiche cycling track and his fellow club members kept vigil. The funeral service took place a week after his death in the interior of the train. The eight-kilometer stretch from the cycle track to the cemetery was lined by over 100,000 people on the day of the funeral, who paid their last respects to him.

literature

• Peter Schnyder (Ed.): Oerlikon Racecourse. 100 years of fascination with cycling. AS-Verlag, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-909111-95-4 , p. 150.
• Sports album of the cycling world . 1924-1927. Berlin 1928, p. 167.

Web links

• Ernst Feja in the database of Radsportseiten.net