Franz Alexius

Franz Alexius (born January 29, 1922 in Witzenhausen , † December 2, 1997 in Cologne ) was a German football player who played for 1. FC Cologne and the Rheydter Spielverein in the Oberliga West .

career

Alexius was born in Witzenhausen, Hesse, and had lived in Cologne since his childhood when his family moved . He learned to play football in the youth teams of VfL Cologne in 1899 , where he then also played in the senior team. The chairman of the local rival Cologne BC 01 , Franz Kremer , persuaded Alexius to move to the south of Cologne in 1947. The Cologne BC played in the Rhine district class in the 1947/48 season and thus one step lower than VfL 1899, but Kremer planned to found a large Cologne club that season, which in February 1948 through the merger of KBC with SpVgg Sülz came about. The newly formed club 1. FC Köln now took over the place of the Sülzer in the Rheinbezirksliga, the second highest division at the time, where 13 of the 24 game days had already been played. Under coach Karl Flink , a KBC “veteran”, the team immediately became champions of season 1. Alexius played side by side with players like Hennes Weisweiler , Walter Radant , Willi Nagelschmidt , Hans Graf and Willi Weyer and scored in the remaining eleven league games, seven goals. The ascent did not succeed the young club, however, in the playoffs they lost to Rhenania Würselen . In the second attempt, in 1948/49, the team again reached the championship unchallenged - at the end of the season they had 114:31 goals and 49: 3 points - and this year they defeated the champions of season 2, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, in the playoffs by. In addition to Alexius, who had scored 22 goals in the 24 league games - another followed in the first promotion game - and was Cologne's best goal-getter ahead of the young striker Hans Schäfer .

Franz Alexius and his teammates now played as contract footballers - the rule that football players in the upper league were allowed to receive up to DM 320 "performance bonus" from their clubs a month had been introduced this season - in the upper league, the Oberliga West . After coach Karl Flink moved to Düsseldorf shortly after the start of the 1949/50 season , Hennes Weisweiler, who had trained as a coach six months earlier at the Sport University in Cologne, took over as an active player as the coach at FC. Otherwise there had been only a few personnel changes, with the tribe of the promotion team one tried to establish itself in the football upper house. In the storm of the Domstadters, the young Hans Schäfer stood out more and more (18 goals this season), but Franz Alexius also contributed with his nine goals in 29 games to putting 1. FC Köln in the top third in its first league season the table landed. With fifth place, level on points with fourth-placed STV Horst-Emscher , they just missed qualifying for the final round of the German championship. The Weisweiler-Elf kept up in the top group of the western league in the following seasons, but the performance fluctuated too much over the course of the season for it to be enough for a final round: In 1950/51 they reached fourth place, this year However, only the first three were admitted to the final round, 1951/52 followed another time fifth. When Alexius changed clubs in 1952, he had played a total of 78 league games and scored 29 goals in the three league seasons for 1. FC Köln.

Together with Hennes Weisweiler, Franz Alexius went to the Rheydter Spielverein in the summer of 1952 . The team from the Lower Rhine had just relegated from the Oberliga to the II. Division and was hoping for immediate promotion. Alexius quickly forgot Heinz Dokter , who had migrated to Frankfurt, and stormed alongside striker Michael Abel with the "Spö" to the runner-up in the II. Division West 1952/53 , so that the Weisweiler-Elf achieved the season's goal of promotion. The black and whites could not stay in the league, after the round in 1953/54 , the Rheydter Spielverein, for which Franz Alexius had scored only seven times in 28 missions, occupied the penultimate place and had to return to the second division. It was the last season of the "Spö" in the top division until today, because in the II. Division the RSV 1954/55 did not find the connection to the top and ended up in a midfield position.

Subsequently, Franz Alexius, who earned his living as a civil servant in the city administration of Cologne, ended his career in high-class football. He remained in the sport as a coach of smaller amateur clubs such as TSV Ründeroth.

literature

• Thomas Hardt, Dirk Innschuld: Under the sign of the billy goat. The history of 1. FC Köln. 2nd, expanded edition. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89533-628-7 , p. 65

Web links

• Photo Alexius