Helmut Rahn

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Helmut Rahn
Helmut Rahn.jpg
Helmut Rahn in March 1962
Personnel
birthday August 16, 1929
place of birth Essen ,  German Empire
date of death August 14, 2003
Place of death Essen,  Germany
size 178 cm
position Right winger
Juniors
Years station
1938-1946 SV Altenessen
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1946-1950 SC Oelde 09
1950-1951 Sportfreunde Katernberg 30 0(7)
1951-1959 Red and white food 201 (88)
1959-1960 1. FC Cologne 29 (11)
1960-1963 Sports club Enschede 69 (39)
1963-1965 Meidericher SV 19 0(8)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1951-1960 Germany 40 (21)
1 Only league games are given.

Helmut Rahn (born August 16, 1929 in Essen , † August 14, 2003 there ) was a German football player . The goal-threatening winger in the World Cup system at the time played a total of 260 league games from 1950 to 1960 in the first-class West Football League with the clubs Sportfreunde Katernberg , Rot-Weiss Essen and 1. FC Köln and scored 106 goals. With Essen he won the DFB Cup in 1953 and the German soccer championship in 1955 . With the German national team he became world champion in 1954 in Bern (Switzerland). After moving to the Netherlands, he scored 39 more goals in 69 league games at SC Enschede from 1960 to 1963 in the Eredivisie , before becoming runner - up at the premier of the Bundesliga with MSV Duisburg , scoring eight goals in 18 appearances .

With his winning goal to make it 3-2 in the 1954 World Cup final against Hungary, Rahn became a football legend who made Germany the world champion and founded the “ miracle of Bern ”. He was nicknamed "The Boss" because of his leadership skills.

Club career

Helmut Rahn was born in Essen in 1929, the third of four sons of a miner's family, and when he was nine he joined SV Altenessen , to which he was an active member until after the Second World War .

In the post-war period he played for SC Oelde 09 from 1946 to 1950 , where he scored 52 goals in one season. After the 1949/50 season, when he had taken 5th place with Oelde in the fourth-class district class Season 1 (Bielefeld), he returned to Essen and signed a contract with the 2nd league champion and senior league returnee Sportfreunde Katernberg for the 1950/51 season. In the north of Essen, the striker, who had just turned 21, made his debut on August 27, 1950 at a home game at "Lindenbruch" in the Green-Whites' team against Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Oberliga West. With the 3-2 success he distinguished himself for the first time as a goalscorer. Since the other newcomer Willi Vordenbäume also hit the nail on the head and goalkeeper Heinz Kubsch was an outstanding expert, the Zechenclub took 12th place as a newcomer; Local rivals Rot-Weiss Essen finished the round in 6th place. Harald Landefeld , intimate connoisseur of the Oberliga West from the start and later for more than 20 years as editor-in-chief of "Sport-Beobachter" am Ball, describes his in the book about the Oberliga West entitled "Helmut, tell me about the goal ..." first impression of the young Rahn's game in the league: “I didn't discover him back then. But I still remember exactly what I chose for a heading the first time I saw him play against STV Horst-Emscher at Lindenbruch: 'Remember: Rahn!' It wasn't a feat. If you didn't have tomatoes on your eyes, you just had to notice: This boy there had that certain something. There hadn't been such a thing in German football for decades! No wonder that the Sportfreunde Katernberg am Lindenbruch were only a transit station for him. ”After 30 league appearances with seven goals, Rahn moved to RWE in 1951, the largest and most traditional club in his hometown. The legendary RWE boss Georg Melches had won the race for Rahn against FC Schalke 04.

In the first home game in the stadium on Hafenstrasse , on August 26, 1951 against STV Horst-Emscher, the three-top team Rahn, August Gottschalk and Bernhard Termath played together for the first time in the Oberliga West . Essen won the game 5-0 and the three attackers developed into one of the best and most dangerous attacking trio in the West. The Red-White won under coach Karl Hohmann 45: 15 points, five points ahead of runner-up FC Schalke 04, the West Championship and Rahn and Termath had each achieved as a winger scored 20 goals and play handlebars Gottschalk completed with 19 goals the attack of the new West Master.

As defending champion in the west, the team from Bergeborbeck took third place in 1952/53, but won the DFB Cup in the final on May 1 in Düsseldorf with a 2-1 win against Alemannia Aachen . Newcomers Franz Islacker and Rahn distinguished themselves as goal scorers and Fritz Herkenrath guarded the goal. In the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, 1953-54, finished eating one point behind to 1. FC Köln the runner-up rank and attackers Rahn every 30 round matches had denied, scoring 18 goals and his eligibility of a place for the tournament days Switzerland underlined. In the year after the world championship, 1954/55 , the Red-Whites first became West Champions and defeated 1. FC Kaiserslautern on June 26, 1955 in Hanover in the final of the German championship 4-3. In the final, under the new coach Fritz Szepan , with captain August Gottschalk, right-winger Rahn and triple goalscorer “Penny” Islacker , the Essen team defeated the “Walter-Elf” from Betzenberg. First, Rahn had jaundice forced to take an almost three-month break, so that he could only play in 19 round games with five goals in the western championship.

In the following years, the German champion of 1955 was able to perform well for a variety of reasons - the end of August Gottschalk's career, change from Berni Termath to Karlsruhe, a certain degree of saturation after years of success and many international games and also the team spirit had gradually been lost - no longer maintain this level, no longer build on the successes of the past years. But the career of the World Cup hero also contributed to this. In 1957, Rahn drove his car into an excavation pit, drunk, and was then temporarily arrested. He attacked the approaching police officers with blows and kicks.

After eight years, Rahn announced his departure from Essen in 1959 and moved to 1. FC Köln . The international striker played his last league game for Rot-Weiss Essen on April 22, 1959, in a 2-3 home defeat against SV Sodingen. Appropriately, he said goodbye as a two-time scorer at the side of other players like Islacker and Vordenbäum. With the "billy goat-Elf" he won the championship in the Oberliga West in 1959/60 alongside attacking colleagues like Hans Schäfer and Christian Müller . Rahn had scored eleven goals in 29 league appearances, and Cologne started the final round of the German soccer championship as a favorite for the title. In the group phase, the West champion prevailed with 9-3 points, Rahn had played all six group games and scored four goals, and moved into the final on June 25 in Frankfurt against Hamburger SV. The final was lost 2: 3. After the final, it was noted in Sport-Magazin on June 27th that the Cologne team “brought the real form for a final with Sturm, Wilden, Breuer and Rahn”. His opponent Gerd Krug is quoted in the same issue as saying, "I probably didn't look good against Rahn".

Rahn received some disciplinary punishments from Cologne, and in 1961 he hit the headlines again for drunk driving and was sentenced to four weeks' imprisonment without parole as a repeat offender.

Rahn (right) in the SC Enschede jersey, 1960

He turned down offers from major European clubs, with the exception of a three-year commitment from 1960, when he was on the home stretch of his career at the age of 31 at Sportclub Enschede in the Netherlands and continued his footballing career abroad after a year in Cologne. When the Bundesliga started in 1963, Rahn played for Meidericher SV . In the first Bundesliga season, the old star played 18 games and scored eight goals. On the fourth match day in the game against Hertha BSC he was expelled as the first Bundesliga player of the field after an assault at the score of 1: 2 (final result 1: 3); it was only used again in the 8th game. In the next season, Rahn was still in the squad of the Meidericher, but due to problems with the Achilles tendon, he was only used once, in the 2-4 defeat against Borussia Neunkirchen . After an operation on the Achilles tendon, Rahn had to end his career in 1965 at the age of 35.

National team

At the end of 1951, Rahn was appointed to the national team for the first time and made his debut together with RWE attack colleague "Berni" Termath on November 21, 1951 in the 2-0 victory over Turkey in Istanbul . A few weeks later - in his hometown of Essen - he scored his first international goal in a 4-1 win over Luxembourg . In the successful games against Norway (1: 1, 5: 1) and Saarland (3: 0, 3: 1) in 1953 and 1954 in qualifying for the World Cup in Switzerland, Rahn was also used by national coach Herberger. Hans Schäfer from Cologne now had the advantage on the left wing, while on the right wing, in addition to Rahn, Schalke Bernhard Klodt was to be expected.

World Cup 1954

In 1954, Rahn was nominated by national coach Sepp Herberger for the World Cup finals in Switzerland . Immediately after the runner-up in 1953/54 in the Oberliga West began a nine-week trip to South and North America for Georg Melches' team on April 23, 1954. The team from Essen's Bergeborbeck industrial district visited Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and the USA and a total of 16 games were played. This trip to South and North America undoubtedly marked the climax of the international encounters that began on June 18, 1949 with a 2-2 draw against Wacker Vienna on Essen's Hafenstrasse. After Bolivia, Helmut Rahn had to return to Germany. There the last screening course before the world championship was scheduled at the sports school in Munich-Grünwald. The WAZ wrote on May 14, 1954 that Rahn and Islacker each had an offer from Racing Club Buenos Aires for a monthly salary of DM 3,000, and Termath, Wientjes and Herkenrath were also very popular.

Herberger initially gave preference to Schalke Berni Klodt in the preliminary round match against Turkey (4: 1) in Switzerland . Rahn was used for this in the second game against Hungary , when Herberger spared the regular players for tactical reasons (a foreseeable defeat against Hungary would mean an additional play-off against Turkey) and called up half the team with substitutes. The German reserve team was clearly beaten by the Hungarians 3: 8. Rahn was still one of the best players and scored a goal - one of the reasons for Herberger to field him in the quarter-finals against Yugoslavia , where Rahn scored again at 2-0. After a 6-1 win over Austria , the Germans were surprisingly in the final, where they met Hungary again as outsiders. After 0-2 deficit, the German team equalized with goals from Max Morlock and Rahn, who also scored the winning goal in the 84th minute to make it 3-2. The “miracle of Bern” was perfect and all of Germany celebrated its world champions.

In the context of post-war Germany's slowly developing self-confidence, Rahn's winning goal against the favored Hungarians is still considered the most famous goal in German football history. It was transmitted through the radio report by Herbert Zimmermann : "... header - blocked - Rahn should shoot from the background - Rahn shoots! - Tooooor! Tooooor! Tooooor! Tooooor! ... "

World Cup 1958

Although Rahn got into negative headlines in the following years due to escapades and had only completed seven more international matches from 1955 to 1957, Herberger stuck to his right winger and did not renounce him at the 1958 World Cup in Sweden , whom he once called "Champion of positive improvisation ”. In the preliminary round, Rahn scored two goals against Argentina (3: 1) and one goal each against Northern Ireland (2: 2) and Czechoslovakia (2: 2). Rahn scored another goal in the quarter-finals against Yugoslavia, so that Germany moved into the semifinals. Here the defending champion was eliminated after a 1: 3 against hosts Sweden . The following game for third place was lost 3: 6 against France .

After six World Cup goals and an overall strong tournament, Rahn was voted second place in the 1958 European Footballer of the Year election and was the best-placed German player in this election until 1970.

He made his last appearance for the national team on April 27, 1960 in a 2-1 win over Portugal , where he scored one more goal. In Ludwigshafen he formed the attack of the German national team with Jürgen Schütz , Uwe Seeler , Helmut Haller and Albert Brülls . After 40 international matches (21 goals), the DFB renounced Rahn, who had signed a professional contract with SC Enschede in the Netherlands for the 1960/61 season.

Before the 1962 World Cup in Chile, however, there was again contact between the national coach and Helmut Rahn. According to Leinemann , Sepp Herberger visited the man from Essen on January 29, 1962 together with Helmut Schön in his apartment. Rahn weighed 85.5 kilograms, and Herberger didn't find that very encouraging to get back into shape for Chile. But the former association coach Kuno Klötzer agreed to complete a special training program with Rahn. Herberger: "I tell him that he has to work harder on himself and that I don't believe in him!" At eleven o'clock on February 25th, a Sunday, Kuno Klötzer called to report that Rahn had been injured and that the x-ray showed a hair break in the fibula. Three to four weeks of absolute peace and with it the end of all hope. “This unfortunate fact, of course, ruins your plans. Because of my old friendship with you, I regret that very much, ”Herberger wrote to Rahn.

Monument at the former Georg Melches Stadium

The footballing qualities of Rahn

He is unanimously described as fast, assertive and powerful with both feet, as an instinctive footballer with surprising individual and final actions. He was unpredictability in person, a massive dribbler, bursting with strength and self-confident. According to his national team-mate Horst Eckel, “the boss also did it on his own, he had things on it that didn't expect any teammates or opponents.” Rudi Michel states that Rahn “had dynamite in his legs, and every gatekeeper had to Watch the world. ”As a player, the Essen resident was a spirited and idiosyncratic type, an unpredictable soloist who single-handedly sought success with explosive dynamics. After the game he was valued as a pick-me-up and helpful buddy, continues Michel. In Leinemann it is noted that national coach Herberger an Rahn valued his speed and the irresistible pull to the goal and he considered him to be one of the greatest talents that German football has ever produced. He had become a great player in German and world football.

Life after football

In 1965 Rahn was able to look back on a long and successful sporting career. As a businessman he was largely unsuccessful. Together with his brother Hans, he tried his hand at a used car dealer, later he worked as a representative and sales manager for a waste disposal company. In the 1970s he organized a number of benefit games, in which he sometimes played himself. After that he avoided public appearances in connection with his time as a footballer. Even for the shooting of Sönke Wortmann's feature film The Miracle of Bern , in which the role of Helmut Rahn is the focus, he could not be interested in an advisory role. He was only to be found regularly in his local pub, the Friesenstube in Essen on Frohnhauser Strasse, where a blackboard reminds of him today. In the pub he is said to have regularly made the slogan for the World Cup final: I'll put the cherry on my left slipper, then I'll pull off. You know what happened next. Later Lothar Emmerich ( give me the cherry! ) Also picked up the cherry for football.

family

Helmut Rahn married the saleswoman Gertrud in 1953. He had two sons, Uwe (* 1954) and Klaus. The grandson of a cousin is the Ghanaian international Kevin-Prince Boateng .

death

Helmut Rahn's grave

On August 14, 2003, Helmut Rahn died after a long, serious illness two days before his 74th birthday in his apartment in Essen. His grave is on the Margaret Cemetery in Holsterhausen . On July 12, 2004, a memorial in his honor was unveiled at a ceremony in the Georg Melches Stadium in Essen in front of around 5,500 spectators. This almost life-size bronze statue of Inka Uzoma has been standing on Helmut-Rahn-Platz at the new stadium since 2014 . The Helmut Rahn sports facility in Essen- Frohnhausen has had his name since 2010. In Oelde , a street was named after Rahn.

statistics

  • 40 international matches; 21 goals for Germany
  • 1 international B match; 2 goals
  • 1st National League
    19 games; 8 goals Meidericher SV
  • Oberliga West
    30 games; 7 goals for Katernberg
    201 games; 88 goals Rot-Weiss Essen
    29 games; 11 goals 1. FC Cologne
  • Final round of the German championship
    10 games; 6 goals RW Essen
    7 games; 4 goals 1. FC Cologne

successes

society

National team

In art

The 2003 feature film The Miracle of Bern is dedicated to Helmut Rahn. He is portrayed in this film by Sascha Göpel . There is also the musical of the same name in which he plays a major role.

German Football Museum

The left shoe with which Helmut Rahn scored the decisive goal in the 1954 World Cup is exhibited in the German Football Museum in Dortmund.

Honors

literature

  • Christian Karn, Reinhard Rehberg: Player Lexicon 1963–1994. Agon Sportverlag. Kassel 2012. ISBN 978-3-89784-214-4 . P. 397.
  • Helmut Rahn: My hobby: Scoring goals. 1959, ISBN 3-421-05836-9 . (New edition with foreword and afterword by Hermann Beckfeld. Henselowsky Boschmann Verlag , Bottrop 2014, ISBN 978-3-942094-40-5 .)
  • Helmut Rahn: You don't play football in good shoes. In: ... the boss continues to play in heaven: football stories from the Ruhr area. Editors: Hermann Beckfeld, Werner Boschmann. Henselowsky Boschmann Verlag, Bottrop 2006, ISBN 3-922750-62-1 .
  • Harald Landefeld, Achim Nöllenheidt (ed.): "Helmut, tell me about the gate ...". Klartext Verlag. Essen 1993. ISBN 3-88474-043-1 .
  • Georg Schrepper, Uwe Wick: "... RWE again and again!" The story of red and white food. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2004. ISBN 3-89533-467-7 .

Web links

Commons : Helmut Rahn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Rahn , kicker.de
  2. ↑ Lorenz Knieriem, Hardy Grüne : Spiellexikon 1890 - 1963 . In: Encyclopedia of German League Football . tape 8 . AGON, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 , p. 305 .
  3. ^ Karn, Rehberg: Spiellexikon 1963-1994. P. 397
  4. ^ DSFS (Ed.): West Chronicle. Football in West Germany 1945–1952. KGT new media. Berlin 2011. p. 151
  5. ↑ Landefeld, Nöllenheidt (Ed.): Helmut, tell me about the goal. P. 42.
  6. ↑ Schrepper, Wick: "... again and again RWE!" The story of red and white food. P. 82
  7. ↑ Schrepper, Wick: "... always RWE!" P. 91
  8. ↑ Sports magazine. Olympia Publishing House. Nuremberg. Green issue No. 27 / A. June 27, 1960. pp. 4, 10
  9. ^ Matthias Arnhold: Helmut Rahn - Matches and Goals in Bundesliga . Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. November 12, 2015. Retrieved November 19, 2015.
  10. ↑ Schrepper, Wick: “... always RWE!” Pp. 77–80
  11. ↑ "Rahn should shoot" . sporthelden.de, accessed on June 19, 2014
    Oskar Beck: "Rahn should shoot". The triumphant advance of black-red-gold began in Bern's Wankdorf Stadium . Welt am Sonntag, May 30, 2009.
    Andreas Bellinger: The final: “Rahn should shoot from the background” . ( Memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Stern.de, October 1, 2003
  12. ^ Michael Mühlen: Helmut Rahn - Goals in International Matches . Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. November 12, 2015. Retrieved November 19, 2015.
  13. ^ Jürgen Leinemann: Sepp Herberger. One life, one legend. P. 407
  14. ↑ Horst Eckel: The 84th minute. Agon Sportverlag. Kassel 2004. ISBN 3-89784-253-X . P. 86
  15. ↑ Rudi Michel: Germany is world champion. Südwest Verlag. Munich 2004. ISBN 3-517-06735-0 . P. 95, 187/188
  16. ^ Jürgen Leinemann : Sepp Herberger. One life, one legend. Rowohlt Publishing House. Berlin 1997. ISBN 3-87134-285-8 . P. 360
  17. ^ Died Helmut Rahn , Der Spiegel, December 9, 2003
  18. ↑ Helmut Rahn . The heroes of Bern, 2004; Retrieved June 19, 2014.
  19. ↑ www.derwesten.de . Retrieved February 25, 2017.
  20. ↑ Heinz Werner Drees: Oelde and "Boss" Helmut Rahn. Oelder Anzeiger, accessed on October 10, 2014 .
  21. ↑ Helmut Schümann: Obituary for the death of Helmut Rahn: Der Wundermann von Bern . Tagesspiegel, August 16, 2003.
  22. ↑ The Miracle of Bern (2003) .  ( 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. German IMDb, accessed June 19, 2014.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.imdb.de  
  23. ↑ dfb-fussballmuseum.de: Rahn's World Cup shoe is reminiscent of “The Miracle of Bern” , July 4, 2014
  24. ↑ Eleven football legends and a coach icon ( Memento from November 23, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Rahn, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boss, The (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Essen , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 2003
Place of death Essen , Germany