Max Leuthe

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Max Leuthe as an active player (before 1907)

Max Johann Leuthe , also Mac John Leuthe or MJ Leuthe , (born August 24, 1879 in Vienna , † December 2, 1945 ) was an Austrian football player, track and field athlete, journalist and cartoonist. He was a prominent representative of the first generation of Austrian players, national players and co-founder of what would later become FK Austria, before becoming an important chronicler of the beginnings of football in Austria as a journalist and cartoonist. In his denazification file, he said of himself that he was “after all, the real founder of Viennese football, which has achieved international renown”.

biography

Athletic career

Max Leuthe was born in the Vienna district of Landstrasse as the son of a forwarding agent. He and his three sisters grew up in a socially respected and affluent environment. His youth was shaped by numerous family trips to the surrounding area. He wrote down his impressions when he was still at school. Together with friends, Leuthe began to play football on the Praterwiesen , following the example of the British working in Vienna . Based on the Prager Deutscher Fußballclub (DFC), the team of the youths Vienna section of the DFC was called and received a pennant from Prague; Leuthe was the captain. This section later became the football section of the Vienna Athletic Club .

Max Leuthe (sitting with a cap) as a member of a Viennese national team in 1899

In 1896 Leuthe became (probably) the first Viennese member in the cricket department of the Vienna Cricket & Football Club . After moving to cricket in 1898, he changed both of his first names to Mac John. In October he made his first-team debut in an 11-0 win over the Olympics .

Leuthe's father died in April 1895, and a little later his mother married the pediatrician Emil Fronz , who was also the personal physician of the royal family. Thanks to his financial donations, Leuthe was able to continue his sporting ambitions, which also involved expensive trips. Until 1905, several club changes followed within Vienna, Leuthe also shuttled back and forth in the teams between the defender and the striker post. He also entertained fellow players and the audience with “great but harmless pranks”. At times he also held the Austrian long jump record . At Easter 1899 the Oxford University AFC made a guest appearance in Vienna and played two games against Viennese national teams (15-0 and 13-0). Leuthe and the player Rudolf Wagner were given the privilege of being able to play in the English selection. In the 15-0 defeat, Leuthe scored an own goal .

In the national team, Leuthe played in the first unofficial international match in 1901, the Urländerspiel against Switzerland , in defense, which Austria won 4-0, and until 1905 he made two more appearances in official international matches against Hungary. A move to Everton is said to have failed due to the veto of the Cricketer officials. However, Leuthe always found it to be a special honor to play against English teams and learned football skills from his role models, such as the trick of playing the ball with his heel, which is why it was called Maxler in Vienna .

In 1907 Max Leuthe ended his sporting career, but then acted as referee for some time, "having gained significantly in weight". In his last active years, however, less about his football skills than about his "escapades" was reported; he had “vaguely” and “champagneed”. In 1910 the football section split off from the cricket players after serious differences , and Leuthe called the Wiener Amateur-SV , later FK Austria Wien , into being, together with the sports journalists Erwin Müller and Hugo Meisl , the Leuthe as "heroes of his youth" designated. This development was seen as the “palace revolution” of a younger generation. Leuthe wrote the text of the new club anthem.

Journalism and politics

Rapid winger Ferdy Wesely, drawn by Leuthe

Max Leuthe was already writing and drawing as a teenager, and shortly before 1900 he also attended a painting school. He then worked as a backdrop painter for the Vienna State Opera and wrote the children's book Der Kluge Hans zur Tuberculosis Enlightenment in 1909 , probably at the suggestion of his stepfather. From 1899 he also wrote newspaper articles, glosses and made caricatures . He described himself as a "sports writer". Because of his humorous drawings he was nicknamed The Brush .

From 1914 to 1918 Leuthe served as a soldier in the First World War . In 1919 he joined the editorial team of the Wiener Sport-Tagblatt , but also worked for the Neue Wiener Sportblatt by Meisl and Arthur Baar, and in the following years for other papers, often in tandem with Erwin Müller. He wrote mainly about sports events and sports politics, but also published memories of his own active time. He described the "combination tactics according to the Viennese pattern", which in his opinion was characterized by wit (later called Scheiberlspiel , similar to Tiki-Taka ). He married the following year at the age of 41. In 1921 the Leuthe couple moved to Switzerland for 18 months, the reasons for this are unclear.

Leuthe's constant rubric "Schatzinger and Schmonzides", a drawn discussion between a Rapid and a Hakoah fan, "in which Leuthe struck decidedly anti-Semitic tones" and which he generally wrote at the Heurigen , became popular. He wrote his manuscripts exclusively by hand in pencil in Viennese dialect. He also published several books under the name "MJ Leuthe". Several newspapers published Leuthe's drawings and poems, including the anti-Semitic satirical magazine Kikeriki , and he acted as a correspondent for the kicker of publisher Walther Bensemann .

This made Leuthe one of the “writing stars” of Viennese bourgeois football culture in the 1920s. He enjoyed a high standard of living, traveled extensively abroad and received numerous visitors from there. After the death of his stepfather, however, he was financially overwhelmed with maintaining the family possessions, so that he had to go into debt.

Max Leuthe officially joined the NSDAP in 1938 . In the previous year he had thought of his deceased Jewish friend Hugo Meisl in extensive obituaries in Viennese newspapers, but only gave the German kicker a few lines of this news. After the annexation of Austria , however, Leuthe stated that he had been an illegal member of the NSDAP since 1932 and emphasized his work for the anti-Semitic Kikeriki , but he kept silent about his work for the Neue Wiener Sportblatt von Meisl. He also called himself "Max" again. As such, he called for the subsequent vote on the connection in the Sporttagblatt . After the end of the war he again tried to play down his Nazi past, but research after 1945 produced a letter from the NSDAP, Gau Wien, in which it was stated that Leuthe had been a sponsoring member of the SS since 1923 and that he kept advertising material for the party have.

Max Leuthe died in December 1945, probably in Vienna. His long-time colleague Robert Brum wrote in an obituary that in 1938 “Leuthe [...] also succumbed to the lazy magic of the false prophet, but did not take any active part”. His friend and companion Hugo Meisl “would have forgiven his old friend Max, as his old comrades do too”.

Stations

successes

Works (selection)

  • 1909: The clever Hans . A picture book (pseud. Mac John Leuthe)
  • n.d.: biographies of famous sportsmen II .
  • 1923: 25 years of football .
  • 1923: Hakoah in England .
  • 1923: The modern football game. A textbook. (with Felix Schmal)

literature

  • Matthias Marschik / Christian Schreiber: "I am the founder of Viennese football". The story (s) of Max Johann Leuthe . In: SportZeiten. Sport in history, culture and society . 9th year, no. 2 . The workshop, 2009, ISSN  1617-7606 , p. 7-26 .

Web links

Commons : Max Leuthe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 7.
  2. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 7.
  3. ^ Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 7/8.
  4. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 8.
  5. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport, p. 8/9.
  6. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 9.
  7. a b c Marschik / Schreiber, founder of Viennese football , p. 10.
  8. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 12.
  9. a b c Marschik / Schreiber, founder of Viennese football , p. 12.
  10. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 12/13.
  11. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 13.
  12. ^ Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport, p. 15/16.
  13. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 16.
  14. ^ Gerhard Urbanek: Austria's Germany Complex. LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-50351-0 , p. 105 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  15. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 17.
  16. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 18.
  17. ^ Gerhard Urbanek: Austria's Germany Complex. LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-50351-0 , p. 202 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  18. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 20.
  19. Marschik / Schreiber, founder of the Viennese football sport , p. 22.