Horst Stahlberg

Horst Stahlberg (born February 14, 1937 , in Potsdam ) is a former German tennis player .

Career

The native of Potsdam led the quartet of the best GDR tennis players. In addition to Horst Stahlberg, Werner Rautenberg , Konrad Zanger and Peter Fährmann belonged to the so-called "Vierblättrigen Kleeblatt" from Weißensee. In 1955, the trained electrician won three GDR titles. At the age of 20 he won the international tournament in Zinnowitz and was the first to travel to the international tournament of the United Arab Republic (VAR) with his doubles partner Konrad Zanger the following year. In the end, they came third in doubles and were immortalized on the golden plaque of the top winners at this event in Cairo .

Together with Eva Johannes , Stahlberg finally won the mixed competition in Cairo in 1960. In this international VAR competition, the GDR team was able to win the final against the Australian pairing Margret Hellyer / Hillebrand 6: 4, 9:11 and 6: 2. Measured against the relatively good field of participants, this was certainly a remarkable triumph for GDR tennis.

At that time, West German clubs had long since kept an eye on the GDR champions and so a year later, at a tournament in Wolfsburg, the local club made him the offer to move to the West and play for Wolfsburg. Stahlberg, who meanwhile studied sport at the DHfK Leipzig by distance , asked for eight days to think about it while playing at a tournament of the Blau-Weiß tennis club in West Berlin. Shortly before he had come to a decision, the wall was built, and all considerations became obsolete. He quickly realized that this wall was blocking the path of his possible career . From this he drew the consequence for himself to withdraw more and more to Potsdam , where he worked as a full-time district sports teacher. Now he played again for his old club, Medizin Potsdam, and thus renounced further sponsorship in the sports club. In the same year he won the Zinnowitz international tournament for the second and last time. At just 25 years of age, he had not yet exhausted his performance potential. Nevertheless, he started less and less in major competitions, so that after his top position in the GDR from 1957 to 1962, he only topped the GDR rankings in 1966. In the 1980s, Stahlberg got the reputation of a "fireman" as a football coach. He saved Motor Babelsberg from relegation from the GDR league in 1984 and 1988. The first time he led the bottom of the table, who was beaten by 0:16 points, to a good seventh place at the season finale; on his second mission, the team saved himself under his leadership with ten points from the last seven games.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , he received the silver badge of the German Tennis Association (DTB) because he was nominated four times for the Berlin-Brandenburg selection. His professional activity as a tennis instructor in competitive sports was opposed to the fact that his training was not recognized by the DTB. Only the C-trainer license, i.e. a trainer certificate for popular sport, was awarded to him. Even today, Stahlberg swings the club for Potsdam and gives coaching lessons.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Excellent success in Cairo. In: tennis. 4, 4, 1960, p. 50. Kluge gives the year 1959 for this international success, in which Stahlberg and Johannes lost the pairing Gaeta / Argon with 3: 6, 4: 6 in round two. V. Kluge: Lexicon. Year ?, p. 371.
2. ^ V. Kluge: Lexicon. Year ?, p. 371. At K. Ullrich: Snapshots. Contemporary witnesses about GDR sport interviewed by Klaus Ullrich. Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-328-00302-9 , p. 117 speaks of “only” 0:10 points.
3. ↑ K. Ullrich: Snapshots. Contemporary witnesses about GDR sport interviewed by Klaus Ullrich. Berlin 1989, p. 117.

literature

• R. Streppelhoff: Tennis as a competitive sport in the GDR. In: Stadium . International magazine for the history of sport. 23, 2, 2007, pp. 243-264.