Fred Chamberlain

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Fred Chamberlain 1956
Chamberlain in a duel with Schaarschmidt (below) at the 1963 DM

Fred Kämmerer (born January 10, 1931 in Obergreislau ) is a former German wrestler .

Career

Fred Kämmerer grew up in Braunsbedra near Merseburg and began gymnastics as a teenager , but later switched to wrestling. Before he could achieve greater success he suffered a serious accident at work in 1951 in which he lost his left forefoot. Despite this enormous handicap from which his stability suffered, Fred Kämmerer did not let himself get down and after his recovery struggled with a special shoe at SC Chemie Halle-Leuna or SC Chemie Halle .

1954 showed the first successes of his tenacity and his will to fight. He became GDR free style bantamweight champion. In the course of his further career he won another ten GDR championships in free style and in Greco-Roman until 1963. Bantam or featherweight style. From 1962 Fred Kämmerer started for activist Geiseltal-Mitte .

Fred Kämmerer's international wrestling career began in 1956, when the Olympic Games were held in Melbourne . An all-German team was sent for this purpose. In the wrestling there were no eliminations between the wrestlers from the FRG and the GDR . The association officials of both states nominated five wrestlers, two from the FRG and three from the GDR for these games more or less at will. One of the lucky ones to be nominated was Fred Kämmerer. Fred Kämmerer fully fulfilled the hopes placed in him in Melbourne. He did not succeed in winning a medal, but with 5th place in the Greco-Roman. Style and 6th place in free style, both in bantamweight, he did excellently. In free style he had the bad luck to meet the absolute Olympic favorite Mustafa Dagistanli from Turkey after two points wins , from whom he was shouldered and therefore had to be eliminated with one defeat because he had reached 5 fault points. But he had justified his nomination in any case.

In 1959 he was also used in the bantamweight world championship in free style in Tehran . But he did not win there and ended up in 10th place out of 11 participants. In 1960 an all-German team started again at the Olympic Games in Rome . This time there were qualifying competitions between the wrestlers of the FRG and the GDR. Fred Kämmerer started in free style in bantamweight and prevailed ahead of Ewald Tauer from Munich- Neuaubing, Jürgen Reidel from Leipzig and Klaus Scherer from Heusweiler . In Rome he defeated u. a. the strong Swede Edvin Vesterby . With two wins and two defeats he finally reached 4th place.

In 1961 and 1962, Fred Kämmerer was unable to compete in the World Championships in Yokohama and Toledo / USA because the GDR did not send a team there for financial reasons.

In 1963 he was back at the World Cup in Sofia . He started in the free style in featherweight and reached 12th place with a win.

In Sofia, Fred Kämmerer arranged his escape from the GDR with wrestlers and officials of the KSV Efferen near Cologne . This took place on August 4, 1963 in a souped-up minibus of the KSV Efferen, with the wrestlers of the KSV Effern stayed in Leipzig and had participated in the gymnastics and sports festival of the GDR. With Fred Kämmerer, his wife and nine-year-old son also fled to the West. Fred Kämmerer settled in Efferen , worked there as a gas station attendant and continued his wrestling career at KSV Efferen. He was the German runner-up in free style featherweight in 1964 and 1965. For the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 , however, he could no longer qualify.

Later Fred Kämmerer also worked as a trainer for KSV in Efferen.

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, WM = World Championship, F = free style, GR = Greco-Roman style, Ba = bantam weight, Fe = featherweight, at that time up to 57 kg or 62 kg body weight)

  • 1956, 1st place , Deutsches Turn- u. Sports festival of the GDR in Leipzig , F, Fe, in front of Erwin Vesper, Leipzig a. Manfred Heinburg, Magdeburg ;
  • 1957, 1st place , tournament in Jena , F, Ba, in front of Fuczek u. Joachim Grohmann, GDR;
  • 1959, 10th place , World Cup in Tehran , F, Ba, after defeats against Shaaaban Babaowladi, Iran a . Tadashi Asai, Japan ;
  • 1962, 2nd place , tournament in Aue , F, Ba, behind Wasile, Romania a . before Karl-Heinz Gorny, GDR;
  • 1962, 1st place , "Werner-Seelenbinder" tournament in Leipzig, F, Fe, ahead of Anatoli Timoschin, USSR a. Jürgen Reidel, GDR;

GDR championships

  • 1954, 1st place , F, Ba,
  • 1955, 1st place , F, Ba,
  • 1955, 1st place , GR, Fe,
  • 1956, 1st place , F, Fe, in front of Rolf Puggel, Markneukirchen u. Erwin Vesper, SC Lokomotive Leipzig ,
  • 1957, 1st place , F, Fe,
  • 1958, 1st place , F, Fe, before Donat, SC Lok Leipzig a. Gawehnus, Neubrandenburg ,
  • 1959, 1st place , F, Fe, in front of Christian Luschnig , SC Motor Jena u. H. Kramer, Chemistry Meißen ,
  • 1960, 1st place , F, Ba, in front of Jürgen Reidel, SC Lok Leipzig a. Voigt, Wismut Aue ,
  • 1961, 1st place , F, Fe, before Kraus u. Metka, bde, Neubrandenburg,
  • 1961, 3rd place , GR, Fe, behind Werner Heppner, ASK Vorwärts Rostock u. Lothar Schneider , SC Lok Leipzig,
  • 1962, 1st place , F, Fe, in front of Lothar Schneider u. Metka,
  • 1963, 1st place , F, Fe, before Christian Luschnig a. Jürgen Schaarschmidt, SC Leipzig

German Championship (FRG)

Olympic elimination

swell

  • Athletics magazine from 1954 to 1965
  • Documentation of International Wrestling Championships of FILA, 1976, pages O-52, O-55, O-63, W-36 and others. W-50
  • One hundred years of wrestling in Germany, Der Ringer Verlag, Niedernberg, 1991, page 191
  • Volker Kluge : The great lexicon of GDR athletes. The 1000 most successful and popular athletes from the GDR, their successes, medals and biographies. 2nd updated edition. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89602-538-4 , pp. 267-268.
  • Website "www.sport-komplett.de" with the results of the GDR championships
personal data
SURNAME Chamberlain, Fred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German wrestler
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Obergreislau