Eugene Rößling

Eugen Rößling (* 18 February 1917 in Mannheim , † 5. July 1965 ) was a German football player as a defensive player from 1936-37 to 1950-51 when VfR Mannheim in Gauliga Baden and in the Oberliga Süd has been active . In 1949 the defender won with the blue-white-red lawn players from Mannheim on July 10 with a 3: 2 after extra time against Borussia Dortmund German Cup . After Rößling had won the championships with VfR Mannheim in the Gauliga Baden in 1938 , 1939 and 1943, 135 point games were added in the Oberliga Süd until 1951 after the Second World War . After nine appearances at TuRa Ludwigshafen in 1951/52 in the Oberliga Südwest , he ended his football career at the age of 34.

Career

Beginning in the Gauliga Baden

From the 1936/37 season, the young defensive player Eugen Rößling belonged to the Gauligakader of VfR Mannheim. In the two local derbies against SV Waldhof on December 6, 1936 (1: 1) and February 28, 1937 in a 4: 7 defeat with a number of goals, he formed the VfR defender pair with Albert Conrad . Waldhof became champions and VfR was runner-up, four points behind. In the following round, in 1937/38, the fast-paced defense specialist with an excellent header game celebrated winning the first gaume championship. The main rival in this round was 1. FC Pforzheim. In the last round game, the blue-white-red lawn players prevailed against the “Club” from Pforzheim with a 1-0 home win in front of 20,000 spectators and thus decided the championship race. Here, too, Conrad and Rößling formed the defender couple and in the runner row the new champion with Philipp Henninger , Otto Kamenzin and Werner Feth had run and kept the men around the two-time international striker Erich Fischer in check. In the final round of the German soccer championship, the Gaumeister from Baden played against FC Schalke 04, Berliner Sport-Verein 92 and Sport-Verein Dessau 05. The 2-1 away win on April 18, 1938 in front of 40,000 spectators was outstanding for Rößling and his teammates in the Glückauf-Kampfbahn after goals from Anton Lutz (73rd) and Karl Striebinger (81st), when the VfR defense fought the Schalke attack with Ernst Kalwitzki , Fritz Szepan , Ernst Poertgen , Ernst Kuzorra and Willi Mecke with great quality . The second leg ended on April 30 in a 2-2 draw in front of 34,000 spectators. Here, too, Conrad and Rößling formed the defender couple. Equal on points with Schalke 04, both teams scored 8: 4 points, VfR Mannheim finished second due to the poorer goal difference.

In the following round in 1938/39, the new coach Hans "Bumbes" Schmidt defended his title in the Gauliga Baden. Unbeaten - the VfR achieved 12 wins in 18 games and drews in six matches - the round was played through and finished in 1st place with 30: 6 points and 41:12 goals. The guarantee was the safe defense with eight games without conceding a goal, with the new goalkeeper Karl Vetter and the usual strong defenders Conrad - Rößling. In the final round of the German championship, VfR was unable to maintain its usual consistency in 1939 and lost both games against the Stuttgarter Kickers (2: 3, 1: 4) and especially the second leg at Admira Vienna on May 14 with 3: 8 Gates. The 3-0 home win on April 23 against the team around Peter Platzer and Wilhelm Hahnemann didn't really help , Vienna reached the semi-finals with 7: 5 points and VfR Mannheim took third place in the group with 5: 7 points.

The Second World War, which broke out on September 1, 1939, naturally also affected conditions in sports operations. Although different from club to club in terms of scope and intensity, missions at the front, casualties, catering situation and later the air raids increasingly affected the orderly game operation, often preventing a round under almost the same framework conditions. VfR Mannheim also had to live with three rounds without top placements, only in the round of 1942/43 did the blue-white-reds lead the table in the Baden district again. In the 12-0 start success on August 30, 1942, Rößling took on the middle runner and head of the VfR defense against FC Phönix Karlsruhe and the later record goal scorer Walter Danner (58 goals) immediately distinguished himself as a four-time goalscorer. The 1942/43 round was the parade season of the VfR: The lawn players won the championship in the Gauliga Baden after 18 games with 137: 12 goals and 36: 0 points.

In the final round of the 1943 German football championship, Rößling could not represent the VfR colors due to the circumstances of the war, not even in the intermediate round in the game against the Gaumeister der Westmark, the FV Saarbrücken, which Mannheim on May 30th in front of 25,000 spectators with 3 : Threw 2 out of the race. Also in the Tschammerpokal 1943 with the games against FC Mülhausen (4: 1), BC Augsburg (4: 2) and in the 3: 5 away defeat against Dresdner SC on October 3, Rößling could not play for Mannheim. Even in 1944, the defender was not available for his club in the final round of the games against FC Bayern Munich (2: 1 a.s.) and 1. FC Nürnberg (2: 3).

Continued in de Oberliga Süd

In terms of sport, VfR did not uproot any trees until 1948 - it landed in 14th, 12th and 8th - but the balance sheet for the second half of the 1947/48 season with 27:11 points made it clear that there was more in the team than the 16th : 22 points in the first half of the season and hopes for a significant improvement in the following years were not unrealistic.

At the end of this season, it was less the sporting events than the currency reform , i.e. the conversion of the worthless Reichsmark to the DM on June 21, 1948, causing financial turbulence for some football clubs, because although the DFB only had the status of "contract player" when it was re-established Legalized in January 1950, Oberliga kickers were no longer pure amateurs. The state-owned Toto GmbH was founded in May 1948 in Württemberg-Baden, among other things in order to be able to assist the clubs . On their first betting slip on 15./16. May 1948 the Mannheim derby between the SVW and the VfR as game 1 at the top.

Since the three newcomers Fritz Bolleyer (25-7), Ernst Langlotz (21-7) and Rudi Maier (27-0) quickly proved to be reinforcements in 1948/49, the advance of the Mannheim lawn players on the sporting basis of the second half of 1947 / 48 on the runner-up place possible. In the two top games against the superior Südmeister Kickers Offenbach on November 28, 1948 and April 10, 1949, the defensive formation of the VfR was each occupied with goalkeeper Hermann Jöckel , the defenders Philipp Henninger and Rößling and in the runner row with Jakob Müller , Kurt Keuerleber and Rudi Maier came up. Both games ended 1: 1 and Rößling had played in 23 round games. With the runner-up, Mannheim was entitled to participate in the final round of the German championship .

In the quarter-finals, the possibly underestimated VfR defeated Hamburger SV in the Frankfurt Waldstadion with a sensational 5-0. In addition to the dangerous attack series, the defensive network also proved its worth, which did not allow the HSV's offensive formation with Manfred Krüger , Heinz Werner , Edmund Adamkiewicz , Herbert Wojtkowiak and Erich Ebeling to develop. In the semifinals, the team around defender Rößling faced Offenbach strikers Gerhard Kaufhold , Kurt Schreiner , Emil Maier , Albert Wirsching and Willi Weber , against whom they had drawn twice in the major league. The game took place on June 26th at the Glückauf-Kampfbahn in Gelsenkirchen , and the three goals of the game came in the first eight minutes: Center forward Löttke brought VfR 1-0 up in the first minute, Schreiner equaled for him OFC in the 3rd minute and Rudolf de la Vigne's goal in the 8th minute meant the 2: 1 final score for Mannheim and the surprising final entry of the team from the city of squares.

Also against the final opponent Borussia Dortmund , the North Baden were considered outsiders. On a scorchingly hot Sunday in July - the game went down in the annals as the “Stuttgart Heat Battle” - VfR was able to equalize the Dortmund leadership twice, so that the approximately 92,000 spectators in the overcrowded Neckarstadion (89,420 tickets had officially been sold) for their entrance fee received a 30 minute addition. In the middle striker Löttke scored the 3-2 winner for VfR Mannheim in the 108th minute. The team of coach Hans "Bumbes" Schmidt had played all three final round matches in the same formation.

The VfR 1949/50 did not win the title or the runner-up in the Oberliga Süd, but with fourth place they had once again qualified for the final with 16 teams this year. Rößling had only missed a game in the top division. On May 21, 1950, the two finalists of the previous year, Borussia Dortmund and VfR Mannheim, met in the preliminary round in front of 38,000 spectators in the Gladbeck Stadium. The West German champions did not succeed in the final defeat, the team around defender Rößling prevailed 3-1; only Franz Islacker was new to the defending champion's team. In the intermediate round on June 4th, however, the VfR came out of the final with a 1: 2 against the West Vice-Champion Prussia Dellbrück; Last but not least, the outstanding performance of the future national goalkeeper Fritz Herkenrath prevented Rößling and colleagues from making it into the semi-finals.

At the beginning of the first half of the season, Rößling had in the competition for the regional cup on September 18, 1949 in front of 22,000 spectators in the Waldhof Stadium in the game Nordbaden against Pfalz / Rheinhessen (with the brothers Fritz and Ottmar Walter ) alongside Georg Siegel (SV Waldhof) in a 1 : 4 defeat the defenders formed.

The last league game for VfR Mannheim played the long-standing defensive great on May 1, 1951 in the catch-up game against Munich 1860 in the stadium on Grünwalderstrasse . In a 2: 5 defeat, he defended together with his defense colleagues Jöckel, Senk, Müller, Keuerleber and Maier. Rößling had completed 16 league games for VfR in 1950/51 when he reached 12th rank. After a total of 135 appearances in the Oberliga Süd at his hometown club, he continued one season at TuRa Ludwigshafen in the Oberliga Südwest; Due to an injury, he could only play in nine games for TuRa and then finally ended his football career.

Web links

• Eugen Rößling in the database of weltfussball.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hardy Green, Lorenz Knieriem: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 8: Player Lexicon 1890–1963. P. 319.
2. ↑ Andreas Ebner: When the war ate football. P. 125
3. ↑ Andreas Ebner: When the war ate football. P. 130
4. ↑ Andreas Ebner: When the war ate football. Pp. 152/153
5. ↑ Andreas Ebner: When the war ate football. Pp. 244, 254
6. ↑ 100 years VfR Mannheim, p. 106.
7. ↑ Gerhard Zeilinger: Triumph and decline in Mannheim's football sport 1945 to 1970. P. 63

literature

• Andreas Ebner: When the war ate football. The history of the Gauliga Baden 1933–1945. Publishing house regional culture. Ubstadt-Weiher 2016. ISBN 978-3-89735-879-9 .
• Werner Skrentny (Ed.): When Morlock still met the moonlight. The history of the Oberliga Süd 1945–1963. Klartext, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-88474-055-5 .
• Klaus Querengässer: The German football championship. Part 1: 1903-1945 (= AGON-Sportverlag statistics. Vol. 28). AGON-Sportverlag, Kassel 1997, ISBN 3-89609-106-9 .
• Klaus Querengässer: The German football championship. Part 2: 1948–1963 (= AGON-Sportverlag statistics. Vol. 29). AGON-Sportverlag, Kassel 1997, ISBN 3-89609-107-7 .
• VfR Mannheim (Ed.): 100 Years VfR Mannheim 1896–1996. A traditional club on new paths. Zechnersche Buchdruckerei. Speyer 1996.
• Hardy Grüne , Lorenz Knieriem: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 8: Player Lexicon 1890–1963. AGON-Sportverlag, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 , p. 319.