Gottfried Weber (soccer player)

Gottfried Weber (born August 6, 1914 in Dresden , † 1982 in Berlin ) was a German football goalkeeper and to this day the only deaf footballer in the higher leagues. As the goalkeeper of the Dresdner SC, he was German Cup winner (1940 and 1941) and German champion (1943 and 1944). After the Second World War was careful Weber goal, among others, in the season 1951/52 for the BSG unit Pankow in the top division Oberliga of GDR sports committee . Weber was also appointed several times in the football world selection of the deaf.

Athletic career

Weber moved up from 1937 as a goalkeeper in the first team of the Dresdner SC with captain and national player Helmut Schön , who later became national coach (1964-78). With the club, which often competed in front of more than 60,000 spectators in the club's own stadium at the Ostragehege , Weber won the German Club Cup in the 1940 and 1941 seasons and the German championship in 1943 and 1944 . Behind regular goalkeeper Willibald Kress , who played for the DSC in 24 cup games and 39 finals for the national championship, Weber was rarely called up in the finals. Weber was twice in 1943/44 in the final war championship on the way of the DSC to the final at Dresdner Tor.

After the war he first played in Mügeln in Saxony and at Chemie Eilenburg , then moved to East Berlin and stood for the first time on December 9, 1951 in the gate of the company sports association (BSG) Einheit Pankow. He replaced the previous goalkeeper Helmut Ostermann. The soccer team of the BSG unit was founded in the summer of 1951 to be the second East Berlin representative to take part in the DS-Oberliga. This was a political decision to upgrade the sporting character of the "capital of the GDR ". Unit Pankow was added to the league for the 1951/52 season as an additional 19th team instead of the previously relegated VfB Pankow without athletic qualifications . The team consisted of several former VfB players and numerous newcomers. In the course of the season, more new players were signed, including Weber. On his debut, unit had not won a win after 16 match days and achieved a goal difference of 9:22. After his first use ( Motor Zwickau - Unit Pankow 4: 0) he was immediately the goalkeeper, but could not stop the decline of the Pankower. At the end of the season, the BSG unit had only come to five wins after 36 point games and achieved a goal difference of 38:94. On Weber's account 72 goals were conceded. As bottom of the table, the BSG unit Pankow rose from the league and the almost 38-year-old said goodbye to performance-based football.

General

Weber lost his hearing due to a serious illness in infancy and was forced to learn spoken German in the school system of the Weimar Republic (like until 2002, the year sign language was officially recognized as a separate language). Due to his outstanding sporting achievements and unusual reflexes, he was discovered for football and trained as a goalkeeper at Dresdner SC.After 1933, as an athlete, he not only escaped the euthanasia program of the Nazi dictatorship, to which many deaf people also fell victim, but also the move into the German Wehrmacht at the start of the war.

Weber is the father of the multi-award-winning composer, guitarist, director and author Helmut Oehring (* 1961 as Helmut Weber), who set a musical monument to his father in 2003 with the chamber music GOTTFRIED W. Greatest goalkeeper of all time .

literature

• German sport echo : born 1951–1952. ISSN  0323-8628 .
• Andreas Baingo , Michael Horn: The History of the GDR Oberliga. 2nd Edition. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89533-428-6 , page 336.
• Helmut Oehring: With different eyes. From the child of deaf parents to the composer (btb / luchterhand 2011).

Web links

• Gottfried Weber in the database of weltfussball.de (with the games for the German championship)
• Gottfried Weber in the database of weltfussball.de (with the GDR league games)