Günter Perleberg

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Günter Perleberg (born March 17, 1935 in Brandenburg an der Havel ; † August 1, 2019 in Garbsen ) was a German canoeist . He won Olympic gold in Rome in 1960 and silver in Tokyo in 1964 .

Life

Perleberg was first GDR champion in the two-man kayak in 1957 in the boat of SC Aufbau Magdeburg and in 1958 in the single kayak . At the 1960 Olympic Games on Lake Albano , a 4-by-500-meter relay was held once in a single kayak, which was replaced by the four-kayak from 1964. For this season, Friedhelm Wentzke and Paul Lange, two canoeists from the Federal Republic and Günter Perleberg and Dieter Krause, two canoeists from the GDR were registered. The relay won gold, making it the most successful all-German team .

In 1959, 1961 and 1963 Perleberg was European champion in the four-man kayak, in 1963 he won the world championship in Yugoslav Jajce . In Jajce Perleberg separated from the GDR team and fled to the Federal Republic, where he settled in Havelse and pursued his learned profession as a civil engineer .

The all-German team for the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo should be determined by the canoeists in two regattas, one each in Magdeburg and Duisburg . Here the problem arose that Perleberg was threatened with criminal law there because of his escape from the GDR and therefore did not want to compete in Magdeburg. Since this led to serious diplomatic entanglements, the IOC President Avery Brundage, as a mediator, made the compromise proposal to hold the qualification with Perleberg in Berlin-Grünau instead of Magdeburg . Berlin-Grünau belonged to East Berlin, but the special status of Berlin as a four-sector city allowed the GDR leadership to save face. Two days before the qualification in Magdeburg, the first qualification in a four-man kayak was held on September 10, 1964 in Berlin-Grünau, which the West German four-man won by 0.3 seconds. At the second regatta in Duisburg on September 19, the West German boat clearly won.

At the games in Tokyo, the West German crew represented Germany in a four-person kayak with Holger Zander , Perleberg, Friedhelm Wentzke and Bernhard Schulze . In the final of the Olympic Games on October 22nd, the boat from the Soviet Union was unbeatable, the German four came second just ahead of the Romanian boat.

On December 11, 1964, he was awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf for his sporting achievements.

For his services to sport in Lower Saxony , he was accepted into the Lower Saxony Sports Honor Gallery of the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History in 1988.

Awards (selection)

literature

  • Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle II. London 1948 - Tokyo 1964. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-328-00740-7 .
  • Volker Kluge: The great lexicon of GDR athletes. The 1000 most successful and popular athletes from the GDR, their successes and biographies. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-348-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ German Canoe Association News from August 8, 2019: Olympic canoe champion Günter Perleberg died , accessed on August 8, 2019
  2. ↑ Sports report of the Federal Government of September 29, 1973 to the Bundestag - printed matter 7/1040 - page 62.
personal data
SURNAME Perleberg, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German canoeists
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Brandenburg on the Havel
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 2019
Place of death Garbsen