Helga Koehler

Helga Köhler (born Gohde ; born February 21, 1925 in Hamburg ; † August 14, 2014 in Verden (Aller) ) was the most successful German show jumper from the late 1940s to the early 1960s .

biography

Köhler was born in 1925 as the child of a physician from Verden who was enthusiastic about riding and who, on the basis of his view that "the children have to get out in the fresh air, exercise and do gymnastics, and the best way to do this is to ride", let his children join a vaulting group. In 1930 three of his children - including Helga - took part in a Voltige show number as part of a major tournament in the old Kaiserdamm hall in Berlin, at which Reich President Paul von Hindenburg was also present. Helga Köhler's next stay in Berlin was for the Reich meeting of the German riding youth on 3rd / 4th. October 1931, from which she brought home two ribbons. She acquired the youth equestrian badge in Verden the next year. When Helga was nine, her father gave Helga the four-year-old mare dog-rose , with whom she rode her first hunts at her father's side.

Köhler did her military service in the Soltau riding and driving school , where she also met Inge Fellgiebel , with whom she was to have a long friendship. Inge Fellgiebel then married Hans Günter Winkler , later she became the wife of George Theodorescu and mother of Monica Theodorescu . In Soltau their job was to initiate remonts. At the end of the war, she and Inge Fellgiebel made the trek with the remaining horses to the Mecklenhorst Remontedepot near Neustadt am Rübenberge , which was then under British control. There they were assigned to the stable service and the riding of the horses, which gave both of them the opportunity to ride English thoroughbreds for the first time .

Her first tournament successes - apart from pony tournaments, which she competed successfully as a child - she had with a horse from her father - Prince von Sickingen . She was able to present this horse equally successfully in M ​​dressage and S show jumping. The great success came with her mare Armalva , with whom she was able to reach 5th place in her first show jumping derby in 1949. An even greater success, however, was winning the style prize at this German Derby - a success that she would repeat four more times. This also showed one of Köhler's great strengths. She was considered one of the best riders stylistically - of her time. The press expressed this assessment with the title Amazon Queen. 1949 should also be the first year in which she won the female show jumping championship. She won this championship in uninterrupted succession until 1954, whereby it is worth mentioning that her successes would have been high enough to take third place behind Winkler and Fritz Thiedemann at the show jumping championships in 1952 and 1954 .

In 1950 she married Hans Joachim Köhler , the initiator of the Verden elite auctions and later chairman of the German Equestrian Association , with whom she bought an old farmhouse in Borstel near Verden a few years later . She lived there until her death.

Also in 1950 she was awarded the Golden Riding Badge in Nördlingen. This was due to a lightning action by Inge Fellgiebel, who knew that she was only missing one mark in an M dressage and achieved that she could take part in an M dressage at this tournament on Willi Schultheis ' Pernod in order to get the missing points to reach.

After Köhler and Winkler had been awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf by Theodor Heuss in 1954 and had successfully completed a trip to North America with the German team as the highlight of her show jumping career, she decided to retire from show jumping and devote herself to dressage . Although Köhler was also quite successful here, she was unable to build on the really great successes in show jumping and soon had the feeling that she would not be able to achieve these successes without outside help. As a consequence, she turned back to show jumping in 1955 and was able to pick up on her old achievements immediately.

When the German Show Jumping Championship, which was based on the successes achieved - first to third place - in the past year, was replaced in 1959 by a German Championship , Köhler was able to prevail against the competition again with her mare Armalva and this first Win a title for yourself. The next year she managed to repeat this success with her young gelding Pesgö .

In the 1960s she achieved another great international success: At the European Show Jumping Championships in 1962, she won the silver medal with Cremona .

For her services to sport in Lower Saxony , she was included in the Lower Saxony Sports Honor Gallery of the Lower Saxony Institute for Sports History.

literature

• Carl Friedrich Mossdorf: Rider Profiles. Carl Schünemann Verlag , Bremen 1961
• Martin Schiller: Winner in saddle and sulky. Sports publishing house Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary Helga Köhler  ( 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. , Press release from August 15, 2014  
2. ^ ^{A b} Once world-famous Amazon Helga Köhler died , Dieter Ludwig, August 15, 2014
3. ↑ Jasper Nissen: Large equestrian and horse encyclopedia, Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, 1977, ISBN 3-570-04580-3