Heinrich Schwarzer

Heinrich Schwarzer on a country road in 1950;
Photography by photojournalist Gerhard Dierssen

Heinrich Schwarzer (born July 14, 1922 in Berlin , † August 24, 1992 in Hanover ) was a German racing cyclist .

Life

At the age of 16 Heinrich Schwarzer joined the Berlin club RC Sturmvogel 1900 . He completed his training as a beer brewer and initially did athletics in his spare time. At the age of 17 he switched to cycling. In 1939 he was able to win the German youth championship. With the 2nd place in Rund um Berlin behind Harry Saager celebrated a successful start with the amateurs. In 1942 he won around Cologne and around Dortmund, then he was drafted as a soldier. Occasionally he was allowed to compete in bicycle races and scored 12 victories in 1943. The same was true for the year 1944, when he mostly competed in track races. He fell into French captivity, from which he fled by bicycle in October 1945 and was shot on the way. In February 1946 he was released from the military hospital and happened to be "stuck" in Hanover on the way back to Berlin. Just a few weeks later, in March 1946, he drove his first post-war race in Munich .

In the years after the war, Heinrich Schwarzer was considered the most successful German racing driver (in 1948, for example, he won 34 races, which none of his competitors achieved); he was even called the "new Coppi ". Although Schwarzer was unable to meet these high expectations in the following years, he developed into a constant figure in German cycling and was successful on the road and on the track . Because of his actual height he was called the "long Heiner".

In 1948 and 1951 Schwarzer won again at Rund um Köln . He was German champion four times: in 1950 in the single pursuit as well as in the two-man team driving , together with Harry Saager ; In 1951 and 1952 he was again German Pursuit Champion. In 1948 and 1951 he was German runner-up in road racing. At the Tour of Germany in 1950 he won the second stage and at the road world championships in Varese in the same year he finished sixth. The following year he had to give up at the World Cup due to a defect.

Schwarzer also started ten times in six-day races . In 1948 he also set a new German hour record over 44.279 kilometers on the Amorbahn in Munich . In 1955 he ended his cycling career.

Heinrich Schwarzer, who was actually a trained beer brewer, opened a laundry in Hanover, which he had to give up in 1971 for health reasons. Until 1981 he worked in the petrol station of his former cycling colleague Werner Potzernheim . In December 1991 he suffered a stroke, of which he died in August 1992.

literature

• Walter Euhus : Spoke sport . Hanover's historic cycling . Die Speiche, Langenhagen 2001, p. 174ff. ISBN 3-9807011-0-7 .

Web links

• Heinrich Schwarzer in the Radsportseiten.net database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Express-Verlag (ed.): Illustrierter Radsportexpress . No. 10/1947 . Berlin, S. 4 .
2. ↑ Express-Verlag (ed.): Illustrated Radsportexpress . No. 50/1948 . Berlin, S. 397 .
3. ↑ Der Spiegel v. February 19, 1949 on spiegel.de