Felix Linnemann

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Felix Linnemann (born November 20, 1882 in Essen , † March 11, 1948 in Steinhorst ) was a German football official , from 1925 to 1945 the fourth president of the German Football Association (DFB) . He was a member of the NSDAP from 1937 and a member of the SS from 1940. As head of a criminal police control center, he was responsible for the deportations of Sinti and Roma to extermination camps.

Life

Linnemann grew up as the son of an architect in food and attended to the Graduate 1902 Burggymnasium . He then studied law and medicine in Munich, Münster and Berlin, but did not obtain an academic degree. In 1902 he became a member of the Berlin FC Preussen and was elected to its board in 1908. From October 1, 1904 to September 30, 1905, he served as a one-year volunteer in the German Army. In 1910 he was accepted into the public service as a detective commissioner candidate and passed the specialist examination on May 31, 1912 with the grade sufficient. In August 1914 he was drafted as a soldier for the First World War and received the Iron Cross 2nd class after just three months. After he became seriously ill with typhus and dysentery in July 1917, he was transferred to a surveillance department in Berlin . After the end of the war he continued his police service in Berlin and after his promotion to criminal inspector was employed in the department for imposture and check fraud.

In 1918 Linnemann took over the chairmanship of the Association of Brandenburg Ball Game Clubs. In this capacity, at the meeting of the DFB Federal Committee in April 1919, he strongly advocated the strengthening of the DFB as the umbrella organization for German football and was then appointed 2nd Federal Chairman of the DFB. At that time he was already of the opinion that football should have a class-conquering function. In 1925 Linnemann replaced Gottfried Hinze as chairman of the DFB. With a view to the impending attraction to the entertainment tax, he spoke out vehemently against the introduction of professional football, but on the other hand pushed the commercialization of football, among other things by winning sponsors in order to strengthen the clubs financially. At Linnemann's instigation, Otto Nerz , a full-time Reich coach, was appointed for the first time for the national soccer team in 1926 . Until the dissolution of the German Reich Committee for Physical Exercise (DRL) in 1933, Linnemann was its 3rd chairman.

After all social organizations were brought into line by the National Socialists, Linnemann was commissioned by the Reich Sports Commissioner von Tschammer und Osten on May 30, 1933 with the management of the DFB, which he formally took over at the DFB Bundestag on July 9, 1933. In personal union in 1934 he became head of the football department in the German Reichsbund for physical exercises , which had taken the place of the DRL. Under the direction of Linnemann, the league system in football was reorganized in 1933. The seven regional member associations of the DFB were dissolved, and their mostly small league structures were replaced by 16 central Gauligen , whose winners determined the German champions in a final round. Regional championships no longer took place.

The national soccer team also fell under Linnemann's area of ​​responsibility in the soccer department. With a lot of propaganda effort, it was made a favorite among the German public for the 1936 Olympic football tournament in Berlin. The national team started the tournament promisingly with a 9-0 win over Luxembourg. Then Linnemann ordered the next game against Norway to spare the established players and replace them with young players. When Reich trainer Nerz expressed concerns, Linnemann wiped them off the table with the remark “I am responsible to the Reich Sports Leader”. Germany lost 2-0 under the eyes of Adolf Hitler and was eliminated from the Olympic tournament. Although Linnemann then shifted all the guilt on Mink, his decision initiated his creeping disempowerment.

Initially, Linnemann, accompanied by opaque circumstances that dragged on from 1936 to 1938, initiated the replacement of Nerz and his successor by Sepp Herberger . His wrong decision at the Olympic Games made him vulnerable, and he was still neither a member of the NSDAP nor the SS , unusual for a police officer. This shortcoming was cited as the reason that, as the previous head of the Berlin criminal police, he was transferred to the criminal police college in Stettin on April 1, 1937 . He was thus cut off from the Berlin decision-making processes in the specialist office and at the DFB, and in the following years he only performed representative tasks, although he was never relieved of his management positions in both areas. He remained a curator at the Berlin University for Physical Education and a member of the FIFA Amateur Committee .

As head of the Szczecin technical school, he joined the NSDAP in 1937 ( membership number 4,652,107). In 1939, Linnemann was transferred to Hanover as head of the criminal police control center , where he was promoted to government and criminal director. As head of the department, he was also responsible for the deportation of the Sinti and Roma residing in the Hanover region to the concentration camps (cf. Porajmos ).

Grave of Felix Linnemann in the Steinhorst cemetery (2014)

In 1940 he became a member of the SS (SS-No. 353.496) and rose there to SS-Obersturmbannführer and after his transfer to the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin on January 30, 1945 to SS-Standartenführer .

On April 27, 1940, the DFB formally dissolved, Linnemann was appointed one of the three liquidators.

After the end of the Second World War , Linnemann was arrested by the British military government on May 26, 1945 because of his membership in the SS and interned in the Westertimke camp for six months . At the insistence of FIFA, he should no longer hold any national or international offices in football committees. After his release from internment, he lived with his wife in Steinhorst , where he died on March 11, 1948 and was buried.

literature

  • Hubert Dwertmann: Athletes - officials - participants in the mass murder: the example of the DFB President Felix Linnemann . In: SportZeiten 5 . No. 1 . The workshop, 2005, ISSN  1617-7606 , p. 7-46 .
  • Dirk Bitzer, Bernd Wilting : Storming for Germany: The History of German Football from 1933 to 1954 . Campus, Frankfurt, New York 2003, ISBN 978-3-593-37191-7 .
  • Nils Havemann: Football under the swastika . Campus Verlag Frankfurt / New York, 2005

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 370.
  2. ↑ Safe and insured. In: Der Spiegel 20/1975. May 12, 1975, pp. 145-148 , accessed January 24, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Linnemann, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German football official, President of the German Football Association
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Steinhorst
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1948
Place of death Steinhorst