Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder

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Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder (2011)
Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder (2009)

Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder (born March 3, 1933 in Mannheim as Gerhard Mayer ; † August 17, 2015 in Stuttgart ) was a German sport functional and politician of the CDU . From 1980 to 2001 he was a member of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg and from 1980 to 1991 Kultus - and from 1991 to 1998 Finance Minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg. From 1975 to 2000 Mayer-Vorfelder held the office of president of the Bundesliga soccer club VfB Stuttgart . He then acted as President of the German Football Association from 2001 to 2006 .

youth

Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder was the son of a Baden senior government councilor. In 1935, his father extended the surname, which was originally just “Mayer”, to include the maiden name of the paternal grandmother to “Mayer-Vorfelder” in order to avoid any confusion with families of the same name in the village.

Mayer-Vorfelder attended high schools in Waldshut and Freiburg , after which he studied law in Freiburg and Heidelberg . In 1959 he began his career as a Councilor in Nuertingen .

Politician

He began his political career as personal advisor to the Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg , Hans Filbinger, and in 1976 became political state secretary in the State Ministry . From 1976 to 1978 Mayer-Vorfelder was State Secretary with cabinet rank in the Ministry of Finance. In 1980, under Prime Minister Lothar Späth, he succeeded Roman Herzog, Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Culture and Sport, who had moved to the Ministry of the Interior ; he held this office until Späth's resignation in 1991. Späth's successor Erwin Teufel appointed Mayer-Vorfelder as finance minister. He held this office until 1998, when he was succeeded by Gerhard Stratthaus . From 1980 to 2001 Mayer-Vorfelder represented the constituency of Stuttgart II as a member of the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg .

Sports official

From 1968 to 1985 he was a board member of the Württemberg Football Association . In 1975 Mayer-Vorfelder became President of VfB Stuttgart . The club was relegated to the second division shortly after taking office , but later won two German championship titles and a DFB Cup victory during his presidency. When he resigned on October 30, 2000, he left the club in a heavily indebted state. A year earlier, Hansi Müller had formed an opposition to Mayer-Vorfelder and his managing director Ulrich Schäfer . In June 1999, the VfB supervisory board expressed its distrust of Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder and announced that it would not support the re-election of the president at the general meeting a year later. The chairman of the supervisory board, Heinz Bandke , who until then had mostly supported the decisions of the club's president, prevailed against Mayer-Vorfelder by appointing Hansi Müller to the club's board. The transfer policy of Mayer-Vorfelder and his closest confidante Schäfer was seen in the VfB environment as the main reason for the club's high level of debt.

From April 28, 2001, Mayer-Vorfelder was President of the DFB . From 1992 to 1998 and again from 2002 to 2007 he was a member of the FIFA Executive Committee . His absence from the vote on the allocation of television rights for the 2002 and 2006 World Championships to the ISL and the Kirch Group in 1996 led to criticism. In the election campaign for the FIFA presidency in 2002, he supported Sepp Blatter . After the departure of the German national team at the 2004 European Football Championship in Portugal and Rudi Völler's resignation as team manager, Mayer-Vorfelder came under fire. He was accused of having gone it alone in the search for a coach; his high-handed style has been criticized. From October 23, 2004, he led the DFB in a double leadership with the executive president Theo Zwanziger , as a vote against his candidacy two years before the 2006 World Cup should be prevented. Mayer-Vorfelder also agreed not to run for an extraordinary DFB Bundestag in 2006. His DFB presidency therefore ended on September 8, 2006. Until March 2009 he was an elected member of the UEFA Executive Committee. From 2007 to March 2009, he was also Vice President of UEFA. Mayer-Vorfelder was also Honorary President of VfB Stuttgart. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Bundesliga Foundation .

Private life

Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder was married and had four children with his wife. He died of heart failure on August 17, 2015 in a Stuttgart hospital .

Awards

For his services, Mayer-Vorfelder was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit with a Star in 1998 and the Baden-Württemberg Medal of Merit in 1987 . In 2004 he received the Great Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria . He took the German sports badge in gold eleven times .

Since January 21, 2011, he has had an honorary doctorate (Dr. hc) from the Assen Slatarow University of Burgas in Bulgaria .

reception

Both as a politician and as a sports official, he was often controversial. This was due, on the one hand, to his polarizing nature (he was repeatedly accused of carrying out his offices " in the manner of a landlord "). On the other hand, the functionary was repeatedly the subject of affairs (for example the so-called Toto Lotto affair, the tax scandal involving Steffi and Peter Graf or the investigations of the public prosecutor against his person for tax evasion). The magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung described him as an "affair professional".

Statements made by Mayer-Vorfelder were interpreted as racist and nationalist from several sides . However, in none of the cases could any illegal behavior be proven. In 1988 he wrote an article in the right-wing extremist monthly Nation und Europa .

From 2001 to 2006 the traveling exhibition “Tatort Stadion. Racism and Discrimination in Football ”by the Alliance of Active Football Fans Quotes from DFB President Mayer-Vorfelder, who presented him as an accelerator of nationalism and racism. Mayer-Vorfelder said z. For example: “What will happen to the Bundesliga when the blondes move across the Alps and instead the Poles, these Furtoks and Leśniaks , play?”, “South American and African football have genetically different requirements” and “If in the game against Bavaria Cottbus only have two Germanic tribes in the starting line-ups, something cannot be right. ”The DFB criticized this as a disparagement, withdrew its funding for the exhibition and Mayer-Vorfelder was the focus of a media debate.

He defended the controversial speech of the Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Günther Oettinger at the state ceremony for the deceased Hans Filbinger : “It was courageous, but correct, what he said. [...] Hans Filbinger was not a National Socialist. ”In 2008, he turned against support for the project Netz gegen Nazis by the DFB, since institutions such as Junge Freiheit or the Weikersheim Study Center were lumped “ in the same pot with neo-Nazis ”.

In 2003 he was given the negative prize Sprachpanscher of the year by the German Language Association for the use of Anglicisms or “Denglisch” in public language. At the end of 2004, at the request of Mayer-Vorfelder , the Court of Appeal prohibited Südwestrundfunk from showing Mayer-Vorfelder babbling in a satirical program broadcast on SWR3 , because it was accused of alcoholism. For this reason, among other things, he was awarded the negative prize, locked oyster , in 2005 .

Others

Mayer-Vorfelder held the military degree of captain of the reserve and took part in military exercises for many years.

For the 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa, he supported the social project We Help Africa as the city sponsor of Stuttgart . He was also involved in the board of trustees of the German Childhood Cancer Care Foundation for the chronically ill child in Tannheim in the Black Forest, which supports families with chronically ill children.

literature

  • Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder: A stormy life: memories . Hohenheim Publishing House, Stuttgart; Leipzig 2012, ISBN 978-3-89850-205-4 .

Web links

Commons : Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder  - Collection of Images
Wikiquote: Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the death of Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder ( memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) SWR Mediathek online, August 18, 2015
  2. ↑ a b Gerhard Mayer-Vorfelder is dead , In: Spiegel Online , August 18, 2015
  3. ↑ Management crisis at VfB Stuttgart. Die Welt, October 8, 1999, accessed December 31, 2011 .
  4. ↑ An association accounts. the daily newspaper, October 31, 2002, accessed on July 31, 2012 .
  5. ↑ Supervisory boards in the Bundesliga. kicker, May 8, 2000, accessed on January 15, 2012 (content only accessible with JavaScript).
  6. ↑ VfB plans radical rebuilding. dpa, March 21, 2000, accessed December 31, 2011 .
  7. ↑ VfB Stuttgart accounts with Mayer aprons. netzeitung.de, October 31, 2002, archived from the original on September 4, 2012 ; Retrieved December 30, 2011 .
  8. ↑ Football World Cup broadcast: Fifa secret box
  9. ↑ Serious allegations against the DFB President
  10. ↑ Brochure from the Bundesliga Foundation; P. 48 ( Memento of May 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF file; 6.49 MB)
  11. ↑ DFB mourns Honorary President Mayer-Vorfelder , accessed on August 18, 2015
  12. ^ Bulgarian University honors Mayer-Vorfelder , T-Online News, January 21, 2011
  13. ↑ Football, football about everything - from Bauwens to Meyer-Vorfelder: The embarrassing incidents of the DFB Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 1, 2002
  14. ^ Website of the exhibition Tatort Stadion 2
  15. ↑ League and professionals distance themselves from the racism exhibition. In: FAZ.net. January 10, 2002, accessed March 5, 2012 .
  16. ↑ Christof Siemes: flanks from the right. The DFB and the stupid sayings of its boss. In: Die Zeit 04/2002. January 17, 2002, accessed March 5, 2012 .
  17. ↑ Sven Astheimer: "Mayer-Vorfelder is an arch-conservative incapable of self-criticism". Interview with Walter Jens. Frankfurter Rundschau, February 15, 2001, archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; Retrieved March 5, 2012 .
  18. ^ Outrage over Oettinger Stuttgarter Nachrichten online, April 12, 2007
  19. ^ Mayer-Vorfelder stands aside , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 6, 2008.
  20. ↑ Lull and lall SZ.de, May 17, 2010, accessed on August 10, 2016.
  21. ↑ Chronicle 1980–1989 Fallschirmjägerbataillon 251 , accessed on August 29, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Mayer-Vorfelder, Gerhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES MV; Mayer, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sports official, President of the German Football Association, politician (CDU), Member of the State Parliament
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH 17th August 2015
Place of death Stuttgart