Kurt Manja

Kurt Manja (born February 5, 1920 in Hamburg ; † September 20, 1993 ) was a German football player . The technically perfect offensive director brought it to the Red-Whites of Eimsbütteler TV between 1930 and 1957 to almost 1000 competitive and friendly matches. In 1940 and 1942 he was a member of the championship teams in the Gauliga Nordmark and after the end of the Second World War he played 206 league games for the ETV from 1948 to 1956 in what was then the first-class football league north , in which the leading figure of the Lokstedter Steindamm team scored 80 goals.

career

Youth and Gauliga, 1930 to 1943

At the age of 10, the student Manja started playing football in a club. The youth leader of Uhlenhorst-Herta had seen him play in a street team and then persuaded the talent to start at Herta. He then played for Uhlenhorst-Herta for six years before joining Eimsbüttel TV at the age of 16. He played in the Hamburg youth team alongside Edmund Adamkiewicz and Kurt Hinsch and was allowed to take part in senior training as a teenager. The technically outstanding attacker played his first game in the Gauliga Nordmark under coach Walter Risse sen. on August 28, 1938 in a 3-0 win against Borussia Harburg, where he stormed left winger in the World Cup system at that time . For the young up-and-coming player, it was an honor to be able to play for ETV alongside experts like Wilhelm Ahlers , Otto Lüdecke , Ernst Timm , Hans Rohde , Otto Rohwedder and Herbert Panse . In his first season with the seniors, 1938/39, he won the runner-up with his teammates. The first round match against the champions Hamburger SV was won by ETV 2-1 in November 1938, and in the second leg on February 12, 1939 the Rautträger prevailed 3-1 in front of 18,000 spectators.

Shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, Eimsbüttel went on a friendly game trip to Denmark. Before the departure, the team was nominated in their basic features, and coach Risse assigned Manja the center-forward position. National player Otto Rohwedder was supposed to play left wing instead, which he didn't want. He gave up the trip and stayed in Hamburg. When ETV came back from Denmark, Rohwedder had meanwhile joined HSV. The association round 1939/40 took place under the restrictions of the outbreak of World War II. First a Hamburg war championship was started in 1939, but it was canceled because a regional division Nordmark 1939/40 was started in two seasons from November 1939. The ETV was group winners in season B and HSV in season A and carried out two playoffs for the championship in April / May 1940. The men led by the Manja brothers won the first leg 4-1 and then prevailed 6-0 in the second leg. The 19-year-old played his first representative game as an adult in November 1939. The Gau Nordmark played on Rothenbaumplatz against southern Sweden. In the attack, the Nordmark took on Wilhelm Ahlers , Herbert Panse , Kurt Manja, Rudolf Noack and Gustav Carstens . Three attackers from ETV, two from HSV. The Nordmark won 3-2. In the final round of the German football championship, Eimsbüttel finished second in the group matches behind Dresdner SC with 7: 5 points. A surprising 0: 1 home defeat on May 26, 1940 against 1. SV Jena was with the final 0: 3 home defeat against the strong DSC - with players like Willibald Kress , Herbert Pohl , Heinz Hempel , Walter Dzur , Helmut Schön , Heinrich Schaffer , Richard Hofmann , Heinz Kapitän - a decisive factor in not making it to the semifinals. Manja I had scored four goals in six games in the finals.

Manja won the second championship title with the ETV in the war round 1941/42, two points ahead of the HSV. The home game in the first round was lost on November 30, 1941 with 1: 2 against the big rivals, on the last round match day, April 26, 1942, the second leg was won with the same result in front of 18,000 spectators. In the wars of 1940/41 and 1941/42 Manja also took part in games for the Reichsbund Cup with the Nordmark selection , for example on November 3, 1940 against the Southwest Representation (0: 0 a.d.) and on November 9, 1941 against Lower Silesia (3-0). He played a total of 29 representative games for Hamburg and Northern Germany from 1939 to 1954 and scored 26 goals. A possible national team career of the Eimsbüttel football idol prevented the Second World War, which not only robbed Manja of his best football years, but also brought five wounds. The “Hamburger Anzeiger” reported on January 7, 1943: “Kurt Manja was seriously wounded by shrapnel in the fighting near Rzhev, was transported by plane to Warsaw and on the hospital train to Dresden.” During this time in Dresden he was also a guest player Played championship game with DSC against Riesa and scored four goals in a 7-1 win. From March 1945 Manja was in France as an American prisoner of war. There he played as team captain with Ernst Liebrich and Willi Dargaschewski in the prisoner team "Virginia-Elf" under coach Ferdl Swatosch . On September 8, 1945 he was released from captivity and returned to Hamburg.

Oberliga Nord, 1948 to 1956

Between 1948 and 1956 Manja rose to the leading figure of the ETV in what was then the top German division, the Oberliga Nord, and the tall blonde with a great feel for the ball scored 80 goals in 206 appearances. Together with his two years younger brother Karl-Heinz (Manja II) , he not only represented the colors of the ETV for many years, but also those of Hamburg and northern Germany. With the championship win 1947/48 in the Alster season with 35: 1 points, the Manja-Elf rose to the Oberliga Nord. The ETV started in the league on August 29, 1948 with a 1-1 home draw against Arminia Hannover; The host's goal scorer was center forward Manja I. At the end of the round, Eimsbüttel finished in 6th place and the attacking conductor had scored ten goals in 20 league games. He achieved the best round result in the Oberliga with the ETV in the 1951/52 season with 4th place - tied with St. Pauli as third in the table - where he played all 30 league games and 13 goals alongside goal scorer Gerhard Ihns (29 -18). Brother Karl-Heinz, Kurt Röwe and Alfred Kalkowsky never missed a game in this round.

The ETV record scorer played his last league game in the Oberliga Nord on March 4, 1956 in a memorable 2: 9 away defeat at Hamburger SV. In the half-time the Rothosen had led just 1-0, in the second half the HSV attack with Dieter Seeler , Klaus Stürmer , Uwe Seeler , Günter Schlegel and Franz Klepacz, however, clearly dismantled the later relegated team. His final league standoff was Manja on October 6, 1957 at the age of 37 in the home game against SC Union 03 in the Hamburg amateur league.

job

Professionally, he initially worked as a construction fitter before he took over a cigar and magazine business in Heussweg in 1950, which he sold in November 1984.

literature

• Falke Havekost: ETV Hamburg. 100 years of football in Eimsbüttel. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2006. ISBN 3-89533-529-0 . Pp. 167-174.
• Andreas Meyer, Volker Stahl, Uwe Wetzner: Football Lexicon Hamburg . Die Werkstatt , Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89533-477-1 , p. 216 (396 pages).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lorenz Knieriem, Hardy Grüne : Spiellexikon 1890 - 1963 . In: Encyclopedia of German League Football . tape 8 . AGON, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 , p. 245 .
2. ^ Folke Havekost: ETV Hamburg. P. 170
3. ^ Folke Havekost: ETV Hamburg. Pp. 105/106
4. ^ Folke Havekost: ETV Hamburg. P. 171
5. ^ Folke Havekost: ETV Hamburg. P. 172
6. ^ Folke Havekost: ETV Hamburg. P. 167

Web link

Players A – Z (bung bottle) , visited on March 17, 2020