Heinrich Stevens

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Heinrich Stevens (r.) With racing cyclist Peter Günther

Johann Heinrich Stevens (born February 16, 1881 in Aachen , † May 18, 1940 in Cologne ) was a German cycling journalist, organizer and president of the Association of German Cyclists .

Heinrich Stevens was a busy cycling official and organizer. Before the First World War he worked in the advertising department of Presto-Fahrradwerke , headed several racing teams of German bike factories and organized long-distance road trips such as the Great Saxony Prize . In the first post-war years, he worked successfully on the British occupiers to allow bicycle races in Cologne again at an early stage and did a great job of organizing “ Around Cologne ”. In 1919 he founded a racing driver school in the Rhineland together with world champion Walter Rütt . As the leaseholder of various cycling tracks , he was also referred to as director .

From 1923 to 1924, Stevens was President of the Association of German Cyclists, and for several years also Vice President of the World Cycling Association Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). As the holder of these offices, he was instrumental in ensuring that the German championships in 1924 and 1928 as well as the road and rail world championships took place in Cologne in 1927, which he also organized. He also worked as a journalist and publishing director.

Stevens was married to Maria Bove (* 1885) since 1918. He died at the age of 59 of heart failure in a hospital in Cologne-Deutz . The couple's grave was in the old Ehrenfeld part of the Melaten cemetery in Cologne . It was cleared in the 2010s.

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Jewish cycling manager Ernst Berliner, who emigrated to the USA, expressed himself critical of Stevens in letters to the Berlin cycling journalist Fredy Budzinski : Although he was "undisputedly a great propagandist personality", he had also wasted a lot of money and had several cycling tracks in the Ruined. In addition, Stevens was a member of the NSDAP .

In Cologne, the Heinrich-Stevens-Weg in the Cologne city forest , near the cycling stadium , is named after him. Also nearby is the former Stadtwaldbahn , which was used as a cycling track before the First World War.

literature

  • Rüdiger Schünemann-Steffen: Cologne Street Name Lexicon , Cologne 1999, p. 165.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Death certificate No. 245 from May 20, 1940, registry office Cologne Deutz. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved June 11, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b Wolfgang Schoppe / Werner Ruttkus : Step by step. From 13 decades of history of the Association of German Cyclists . Frehner Consulting, Füssen 2012, ISBN 978-3-929371-23-9 , p. 94 .
  3. ↑ cycling4fans.de
  4. ↑ Frank Schwalm: 100 years around Cologne - 100 years of the Cölner Straßenfahrer 08 eV Ed .: Association of Cölner Straßenfahrer. Cologne 2008, p. 11 f .
  5. ↑ Sport-Album der Rad-Welt 1921 , Berlin 1922, p. 51
  6. ↑ Sport-Album der Rad-Welt 1928 , Berlin 1929, p. 125. The photo from the award ceremony in 1928 shows Stevens next to Cologne's Mayor Konrad Adenauer .
  7. ↑ burial place. In: findagrave.com. Retrieved May 30, 2019 .
  8. ^ Renate Franz: Fredy Budzinski , Cologne 2007, p. 87
  9. ↑ Konrad Adenauer and Volker Gröbe: Streets and Squares in Lindenthal , JP Bachem, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7616-1018-1 , p. 70
personal data
SURNAME Stevens, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stevens, Johann Heinrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cycling journalist, organizer and official
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1940
Place of death Cologne