Heinz Hoffmann (swimming coach)
Heinz Hoffmann (born February 24, 1914 in Danzig ; † July 20, 2008 in Wuppertal ) was a German swimming coach.
Life
Hoffmann came into contact with competitive sport in the pre-war period . Ursula Happe , who would later become Olympic champion in 1956, also belonged to his club, Neptun Danzig .
At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin , he was employed as a supervisor for his home club in the Olympic youth camp. In the Second World War he served as a Wehrmacht officer on the Eastern Front, but was able to make his way to the Western Allies at the end of the war. After a brief captivity , he first settled in Lemgo as a sales representative until he got a job as a secondary school teacher in Wuppertal in 1951 .
From 1951 Hoffmann mainly trained the competitive swimmers of the Wasserfreunde Wuppertal and led them to national and international success. During this time he developed a new training concept with periodically varying training content, some of which is still in use today.
His protégés reached 122 German championships , 10 European championships and one world championship. They achieved 184 German, 12 European and 3 world records. The swimmers who trained under him included Peter Nocke , Folkert Meeuw , Jochen Roos , Olaf von Schilling , Michael Holthaus , Ernst-Joachim Küppers , Ralf Beckmann , Angelika Kraus and Jutta Weber . At the Olympic Games in 1968 and 1972 he took part as a coach of the swimming team.
The retired secondary school teacher was a staunch advocate of competitive sports. At the age of over ninety, he was still standing at the edge of the pool and giving technical tips to swimmers. He also wrote articles about swimming in the Westdeutsche Zeitung under the pseudonym Amann .
Hoffmann was honorary president of the German Swimming Trainers Association he founded
Hoffmann was particularly committed to the swimming sports center in Wuppertal- Küllenhahn , of which he was the first director from 1971 to 1980. After this was largely destroyed in a major fire in 1995, he headed a citizens' initiative that mobilized against the demolition favored by the majority of the council and finally succeeded in having the center rebuilt. Annoyed that the Wuppertal SPD, of which he had belonged for decades, was against reconstruction, he resigned from the party. The performance center was given the name Heinz-Hoffmann-Bad during his lifetime .
He also successfully campaigned for the Wuppertal swimming opera to be used as a swimming pool.
In 1999 Hoffmann was awarded the ring of honor by the city of Wuppertal .
Heinz Hoffmann died in Wuppertal at the age of 94. In his honor, a plaque was placed in the swimming sports center in January 2009.
Web links
- ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: obituary on the page of his home association )
- Moritz Stanarius: memorial plaque for Heinz Hoffmann. In: wz-wuppertal.de. January 25, 2009. Retrieved July 13, 2018 .
- Michael Frisch: Water lovers - a success story. In: wz.de. July 4, 2008, accessed July 13, 2018 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wasserfreunde Wuppertal 1883 eV: “The water friends mourn honorary member Heinz Hoffmann” ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 22, 2008
- ↑ www.werner-steinbach.de ( Memento from February 21, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) List of bearers of the ring of honor of the city of Wuppertal, accessed May 2008
- ↑ Honor where honor is due! In: Wuppertaler Rundschau . January 31, 2009.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hoffmann, Heinz |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Ammann |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German swim coach |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 24, 1914 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Danzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 20, 2008 |
| Place of death | Wuppertal |