Gerhard Purann

Gerhard Purann (born May 16, 1918 in Berlin ; † approx. 1944) was a German track cyclist .

In 1935 Purann started as a youth driver with road and track races. Shortly after his 18th birthday, he was appointed to the German national train driver team. In the same year he became German champion in the sprint of amateurs on the cycling track in Bochum in front of defending champion Jean Schorn , in the tandem race he was runner-up with his brother Kurt behind Jean Schorn and Heinz Hasselberg . At the track world championships in Milan in the same year , one day before the outbreak of World War II , he won the bronze medal among the amateur sprinters. In 1937 he was also a Polish sprint champion.

Purann, a member of the Berlin RV Luisenstadt 1910, was considered the upcoming star and future successor of the 1932 sprint world champion , Albert Richter . He was drafted as a soldier at the beginning of the war, but was given leave for important cycling races. So he started in February 1940 at the "German War Indoor Championships" in Berlin's Deutschlandhalle and won two titles, in the sprint and in the time trial . In 1941 he suffered a crash while racing and a severe concussion. In 1943 he was third in the sprint at the DM. In November 1943, he took second place in an aviator all-around battle in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle, behind Georg Voggenreiter . Then his track is lost. At the German championships in 1944 he was no longer at the start.

Personal

In the further course of the war Purann died under unknown circumstances. The journalist Fredy Budzinski wrote about him after the war: “Purann was a bitter opponent of Hitler and made no secret of it, not even as a soldier. There is a rumor that Purann was shot for 'decomposing the Wehrmacht'. ”In 1949, the newspaper Neues Deutschland reported that Purann's troop had been transferred to Frankfurt (Oder) on January 25, 1945 , from then on there was no trace of him .

The time and place of death of Purann are unknown. The Illustrierte Radsport-Express wrote in 1948: “There is still uncertainty about the fate of the Berlin amateur Gerhard Purann.” His brother Kurt also died in the war; he fell in Estonia in March 1945 . The two brothers had no other siblings. In the 1950s, the Weißensee Radrennbahn was named Gerhard-Purann-Arena .

Web links

• Gerhard Purann in the Radsportseiten.net database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Deutsche Radfahrer - Illustrierter Radrenn-Sport , May 19, 1943, p. 2.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Presidium of the Cycling Section of the GDR (ed.): Cycling Week . No. 3/1962 . Berlin, S. 16 .
3. ^ Association of German cyclists (ed.): Radsport . No. 53/1962 . German sports publisher Kurt Stoof, Cologne, p. 19 .
4. ^ The German cyclist , February 21, 1940
5. ↑ ^{a b} Neues Deutschland , August 28, 1949, p. 8.
6. ↑ Wolfgang Schoppe / Werner Ruttkus : Step by step. From 13 decades of history of the Association of German Cyclists . Füssen 2011. Statistics CD. ISBN 9783929371239
7. ^ The German cyclist , November 17, 1943
8. ↑ quoted from: Renate Franz : The forgotten World Champion , Bielefeld 2007, p. 173
9. ↑ Illustrated cycling express. The trade journal with the announcements of the commission for professional cycling and the main section cycling . Berlin, January 13, 1948, p. 12.
10. ^ New Germany , October 1, 1955, p. 6.