Ernst Kuzorra

Ernst Kuzorra
Kuzorra at the season opening at Schalke 1987
Personnel
birthday	October 16, 1905
place of birth	Gelsenkirchen ,  German Empire
date of death	January 1, 1990
Place of death	Gelsenkirchen,  Germany
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
1920-1923	FC Schalke 04
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1923-1950	FC Schalke 04
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1927-1938	Germany	12 (7)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1935	Borussia Dortmund
1942-1946	SpVgg Erkenschwick
1949-1951	Borussia Hückelhoven
1 Only league games are given.

Memorial plaque on Ernst-Kuzorra-Platz at the Glückauf-Kampfbahn

Ernst Kuzorra (born October 16, 1905 in Gelsenkirchen ; † January 1, 1990 there ) was a German football player .

Kuzorra played for FC Schalke 04 from the 1920s to 1940s and won six German championships and one cup ( Tschammerpokal ) with the team . Together with his brother-in-law Fritz Szepan he introduced the so-called Schalker Kreisel . In 1950 he ended his active career at the age of 45.

Life

Early years

Kuzorra, son of of Mazury originating miner Karl Kuzorra and his wife Bertha, first worked after leaving school on the Consolidation colliery until he focused entirely on football from the mid-1920s.

In 1926 the club rose to what was then the highest West German league. A year later, "Clemens", as his comrades called Kuzorra, made the leap into the national team and played in the half-left position in the 2-2 draw against the Netherlands .

In 1928 the striker was at the Olympic Games in Amsterdam , but was not used. In 1930 his international career was interrupted for one year due to a ban against the Schalke players (for illegal cash donations). Kuzorra could have played as a professional in Vienna for 1,000 marks a month , but remained loyal to Schalke. In 1930, Kuzorra made a name for himself with two international matches across Germany: he contributed three goals to the 5-0 victory over Switzerland . The subsequent sensational 3: 3 in the "motherland" of football against England was one of the defining events of his international career.

Schalke era

The "Schalke era" began in 1933 when the club reached a final for the German championship for the first time, but lost 3-0 to Fortuna Düsseldorf . A year later, the “Royal Blues” scored 2-1 against their favorite 1. FC Nürnberg . In this encounter Kuzorra held out despite a hernia, scored the Schalke winner shortly before the final whistle, collapsed and became a living legend. In the next ten years, one success followed the other: 1935 German champions, 1937 champions and cup winners (first winner of the “double”), in 1939 champions for the fourth time with a 9-0 win over SK Admira Vienna . A year earlier, Kuzorra had played his twelfth and final international match (seven goals) against Hungary . Other operations in the DFB -Trikot prevented Empire coach Otto Mink , bluntly telling the kind with Kuzorras his opinion, did not get along.

Schalke's recipe for success, the "Kreisel" (precise, fast short passing game), also presented the opponents with insoluble problems in the championship games in 1940 and 1942. The Dresdner SC lost 1-0; the following year Schalke lost 3: 4 against SK Rapid Vienna . In Schalke's sixth title, Vienna Wien drew the short straw 2-0 in 1942.

In 1935/36, Kuzorra coached today's Schalke arch rival Borussia Dortmund . He represented the officially first professional coach Fritz Thelen , also a former FC Schalke 04 player and a brother-in-law of Kuzorra. At that time, the rivalry between the two clubs was not yet as prevalent as it is today and Kuzorra himself had family and friendly relationships in Dortmund's Borsigplatz district .

From 1942 to 1946 Kuzorra trained the SpVgg Erkenschwick . He reached the Gauliga with her, the highest German league at the time. From June 1949 to 1951, the twelve-time national player Borussia Hückelhoven trained a team in the Rhine district league. Despite his coaching certificate, the Schalke idol only called himself a "consultant". One last time Kuzorra took place in the 1969/70 season as a coach at Schalke Bank. He acted as a "front man" for Slobodan Čendić , who had replaced Rudi Gutendorf but did not yet have a DFB license.

Both Kuzorra, who was both a brilliant player and an exemplary fighter, and his club mate and brother-in-law Fritz Szepan had passed the zenith of their skills in the mid-1940s. After the end of World War II , you helped rebuild the Schalke team in the West German league. Kuzorra was still active until January 1949 and almost two years later, together with Fritz Szepan, officially said goodbye to Atlético Mineiro in the Schalke Glückauf-Kampfbahn .

retirement

On April 19, 1971, Kuzorra was quoted in the WAZ with the criticism that the 0: 1 Schalke on the previous Saturday against Arminia Bielefeld was a "weak Schalke performance" and also "not worth 18 DM for the grandstand ticket". It later emerged that the same result had been "bought" for a bribe of DM 100,000, a key event in the so-called Bundesliga scandal .

In 1980 Ernst Kuzorra was awarded the Federal Republic of Germany's Cross of Merit and in 1985 he was made an honorary citizen of Gelsenkirchen. On September 18, 1986 he received the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia . He died on New Year's Day 1990 in Gelsenkirchen at the age of 84.

Afterlife

A strong discussion arose in the 1990s, when more and more votes arose to rename Kuzorra-Platz and to withdraw Gelsenkirchen's honorary citizenship, as Ernst Kuzorra joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937, together with his teammates Fritz Szepan and Hans Bornemann ( Membership number 5.415.713).

However, the measures discussed were never carried out, and the name of the square was not changed. Contemporary witnesses basically described Kuzorra as an apolitical person. In individual cases, however, he openly criticized the National Socialist sports policy. When in the final of the German championship in 1941 Schalke 04 lost to SK Rapid Wien after a 3-0 lead with 3: 4, he suspected manipulation. In the direction of the Reich Sports Leader Hans von Tschammer und Osten , he expressed his suspicion: "That we lost here was politics, not sport". Kuzorra's anti-Semitic attitudes are not known. He also obtained tickets for the children of Jewish customers in his tobacco shop when they were already forbidden from attending sporting events.

various

According to a legend spread by the Bild newspaper, the then club president of FC Schalke 04, Günter Eichberg (the "Sun King"), who did not appear in time for the funeral from a holiday abroad, wanted to see the official photo of the funeral which is why the funeral procession and the laying of the wreath are said to have been carried out a second time after Kuzorra's burial. Eichberg himself states that he was only moved by the press to take a picture of Kuzorra's fresh grave, together with the Gelsenkirchen Lord Mayor and the Schalke Vice-President at the time. There were no other actions.

A bon mot on Ernst Kuzorra is attributed to the former Federal President Johannes Rau : When asked whether football stadiums should not also be named after women, he is said to have replied: “And what should we call that? Is Ernst Kuzorra his wife her stadium? "

In the fall of 2017, a facade in Schalke was given the word Kuzorras to indicate the geographical location of the district.

Ernst Kuzorra is one of those players who only played for one club in their career.

The Jewish businessman Leo Sauer financed Kuzorra's driver's license in the early 1930s and hired him as a driver so that he no longer had to work in a mine.

In honor of Kuzorra, the FC Schalke 04 office is on Ernst-Kuzorra-Weg 1.

literature

• Champions. 100 great footballers and their successes. Gondrom-Verlag, Bindlach 2004, ISBN 3-8112-2342-9 , p. 97.

Web links

Commons : Ernst Kuzorra  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Ernst Kuzorra  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Ernst Kuzorra in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ernst Kuzorra in the database of weltfussball.de
• Ernst Kuzorra in the database of fussballdaten.de
• Ernst Kuzorra in the database of National-Football-Teams.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Urban : Black eagles, white eagles. German and Polish footballers at the heart of politics. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89533-775-8 , p. 53.
2. ^ Stefan Goch , Norbert Silberbach: Gray lies between blue and white ; Essen 2005; ISBN 3-89861-433-6 ; P. 212.
3. ^ Matthias Arnhold: Ernst Kuzorra - Goals in International Matches . RSSSF . September 22, 2016. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
4. ↑ Thomas Spiegel / Gerd Voss: Almost everything about Schalke 04 , KiWi paperback, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-462-04101-9 , p. 54.
5. ↑ Hans Dieter Baroth : Boys, Heaven is yours! The history of the Oberliga West 1947–1963 . Klartext, Essen 1988, ISBN 3-88474-332-5 . , P. 45.
6. ↑ Newsticker FC Schalke 04 on December 1, 2011.
7. ↑ Revierkick season 1948/49
8. ^ Club history FC Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 1904 eV
9. ↑ Merit holders since 1986. State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 . 
10. ↑ cf. Working group of Nazi memorials in North Rhine-Westphalia, WM - SPECIAL: Football under National Socialism ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
11. ^ Between blue and white lies gray , Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of November 20, 2014.
12. ↑ Ben Redelings: Schalke album . Göttingen: Verlag die Werkstatt (2014), pp. 132–133.
13. ↑ de.wikiquote.org Johannes Rau
14. ↑ http://offene-kirche-schalke.blogspot.de/2017/09/wo-gende-schalke.html
15. ↑ Thomas Urban : Black eagles, white eagles. German and Polish footballers at the heart of politics. Göttingen 2011, p. 56 ISBN 978-3-89533-775-8 .