Ortrun Enderlein

Ortrun Enderlein
nation	German Democratic Republic
birthday	December 1, 1943
place of birth	Truly
size	162 cm
Weight	57 kg
job	Precision mechanic, sales engineer
Career
discipline	Single seater
society	SC tractor Oberwiesenthal
Trainer	Werner Geinitz, Walter Jentzsch
status	resigned
End of career	1969
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 2 × 0 × 0 × GDR championship 4 × 1 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold 1964 Innsbruck Single seater  Luge World Championships gold 1965 Davos Single seater gold 1967 Hammarstrand Single seater GDR Luge Championships gold 1963 Oberbärenburg Single seater gold 1964 Friedrichroda Single seater gold 1965 Oberhof Single seater silver 1967 Oberhof Single seater gold 1968 Friedrichroda Single seater
last change: December 10, 2011

Ortrun Enderlein , married Zöphel , (born December 1, 1943 in Trünzig ) is a former luge athlete from the GDR . She was one of the most successful luge athletes in the 1960s. She came into contact with luge in her home village of Raschau in the Ore Mountains , but started working for SC Traktor Oberwiesenthal during her active career . She is the first Olympic champion in her sport ( 1964 in Innsbruck ) and has also won two world championship titles ( 1965 in Davos and 1967 in Hammarstrand ). The sporting successes of the luge runners around Thomas Köhler and Ortrun Enderlein were celebrated and politicized in the GDR. Both sports careers fell during the icy Cold War , when the GDR was neither recognized by the Federal Republic of Germany on the basis of the Hallstein Doctrine , nor were sporting competitions between athletes from the two German states tolerated on German soil. The high point of the tensions in Enderlein’s sports career was the controversial disqualification in the “skate scandal” at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble , when she and two other GDR athletes were taken out of the ranking because of the accusation of having competed with heated runners. GDR officials immediately voiced the suspicion that this was an intrigue against the GDR, which was the first to start with an independent team at the Olympic Games. After her sports career, Enderlein worked as a sales engineer. She was a member of the presidium of the racing sled and bobsleigh association of the GDR and was a personal member of the NOK of the GDR .

Life

Ortrun Enderlein is a daughter of the forester Willy Enderlein and his wife Hertha nee. Müller. Her father, who came from Hammerunterwiesenthal , worked as a forest assistant and forester a. a. active in Reichstein , Oberwiesenthal , Mittweida and Trünzig. The family settled in Raschau in the Ore Mountains in 1954 . Her older brother is the motorcycle racing driver Klaus Enderlein .

Enderlein learned the trade of mechanic at VEB Meßgerätewerk Beierfeld , in which she also worked. During her sporting career, she completed a distance learning course to become a mechanical engineer with a specialization in manufacturing technology. Later she worked as a sales engineer at VEB Meßgerätewerk Beierfeld, where tachometers, pressure and temperature measuring devices, solenoid valves, controllers for instantaneous water heaters and similar products were manufactured. She is married to Bernd Zöphel , the former managing director of KUKA Werkzeugbau Schwarzenberg GmbH.

Sports career

Enderlein (center) preparing her sled before the Fichtelberg race in January 1962

Enderlein at the GDR championships in 1964 on the Spießbergbahn Friedrichroda

Enderlein played handball with the BSG Rotation Raschau , for which she was still occasionally active as a goalkeeper in the regional league team in 1964. In this company sports community, she came into contact with tobogganing in 1961 in the racing sledging section supervised by Gotthold Meinhold. Ortrun Enderlein achieved world standards in the racing sledging section of SC Traktor Oberwiesenthal , which was founded in 1962 and to which Thomas Köhler, Michael Köhler , Klaus-Michael Bonsack and Ilse Geisler belonged. According to her own statement, she owed her rapid breakthrough to becoming a top driver to the team, her trainer and her training as a mechanic.

In the winter of 1961/62 Enderlein started in five races and reached fifth place in the national junior championship. When she debuted at major international events, Enderlein only finished 24th after a fall at the 8th World Championships in Imst in 1963 , while her teammate Ilse Geisler was able to secure the title. A few days later, Enderlein took second place behind Geisler in the international competition for the "Honorary Prize of the City of Innsbruck" on the newly built track in Innsbruck-Igls . She celebrated her first major national success in February 1963 when she won the GDR championships in Oberbärenburg ahead of Helga Meusinger , the European junior champion in 1961 and 1962, while Ilse Geisler had no chance due to two falls.

In the Olympic debut of the sport sled 1964 in Innsbruck , she won with fastest time in all four runs (one on January 30 and 31 and two on February 4) is superior with 0.75 seconds ahead of the gold medal in front of Ilse Geisler and Helene Thurner from Austria. In addition, she set a new track record in 50.87 s. During the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games on February 9, 1964, she was given the honor of appearing as the flag bearer for the joint German team . On 21/22 In February 1964 she was able to defend her title as GDR champion (again before Ilse Geisler) on the Spießbergbahn in Friedrichroda . Then she defeated Geisler in the race for the Mitropa Cup. In June 1964, like Thomas Köhler, who also won the Olympic gold, she was awarded the Silver Patriotic Order of Merit on the occasion of the Week of Youth and Sports . Both successes were politicized by the GDR in the struggle for recognition of the GDR's independence and the goal of being able to perform with an independent Olympic team in the future. This included her delegation to the GDR Women's Congress, which took place in Berlin from June 25 to 27, 1964.

In the winter of 1965 Enderlein sled her first world championship title ahead of her teammates Petra Tierlich , Ilse Geisler and Barbara Winter at the world championships on February 6th and 7th in Davos with a lead of over a second after four runs . At the following GDR championship in Oberhof , she won a week later despite being disqualified in the second run (only two of the three races were counted) with a margin of just under a second, again ahead of Petra Tierlich and Ilse Geisler. Due to her sustained success, Enderlein took third place behind Hannelore Suppe and Gabriele Seyfert in the election for Sportswoman of the Year 1965 .

The 1966 Luge World Championships , which should have taken place on the Spießbergbahn in Friedrichroda, could not take place because of the foehn and the associated thaw; also no GDR championship was held. On June 22, 1966, she consecrated the outdoor swimming pool in her home village of Raschau, which had been newly built by the National Reconstruction Agency since 1959 .

Enderlein successfully defended her world championship title at the 1967 Luge World Championships in Hammarstrand . After setting the best time in all four races on February 18 and 19, she was 1.39 seconds ahead of Petra Tierlich and Helene Thurner in the final standings. It also set a new track record in 50.93 s. Because of “discriminatory conditions” (non-recognition of the GDR due to the Hallstein Doctrine ), the luge athletes from the GDR could not compete in the 1967 European Luge Championships at Königssee. Since it was the only European championship held between 1963 and 1969, Enderlein never took part in the European Luge Championships . In the GDR championship of the year in Oberhof, she finished second behind Anna-Maria Müller .

After Enderlein, who at that time was considered to be the “most perfect racing sled driver in the world”, won the Alpine Cup races in Imst in January 1968 as the fastest in all three races, she went to the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble as the favorite . After the final third run (a fourth run could not be carried out) on the track in Villard-de-Lans on February 11 and 13, 1968, she was just 0.02 seconds ahead of her teammate Anna-Maria Müller, but was disqualified in a controversial decision. The Polish inspector and vice-president of the International Luge Federation, Lucjan Świderski, checked the runners of the participating GDR sledges by throwing snow against them that had "evaporated with a hiss" and came to the conclusion that they had been heated unauthorized. Other accounts of this “snow test” suggest that Świderski had put little snow on the side surface of the ice edge of the sledge, which only melted. In addition to Enderlein, the second placed Anna-Maria Müller and the fourth placed Angela Knösel were disqualified. The Olympic victory went to the Italian toboggan runner Erika Lechner . After the exclusion of the GDR luge driver Horst Hörnlein from the 1967 World Championships for the same reason, the charge of unauthorized runners heating caused an Olympic scandal this time, which against the background of the explosive sporting policy of two German teams competing separately for the first time and the Cold War, a strong political one Leg note contains: While the West German press spoke of “racing fraud”, GDR sports officials around Manfred Ewald accused the West German tobogganing association of having staged an intrigue against the GDR women and the GDR team , which had competed independently for the first time . As a result, the excluded GDR tobogganers made a notarized affidavit that they had not been guilty of anything wrong, the validity of which Enderlein has confirmed to the present day. According to MfS documents that emerged in 2006 and evaluated by Giselher Spitzer , Lucjan Świderski was said to have been bribed by the associations of the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria. The question of whether the GDR female tobogganists cheated or were cheated of their earned medals has not yet been finally clarified, even though the renowned West German media and the umbrella organizations of German sport assume that there is no cheating in Grenoble the athletes had given. At a reunion of the German medal winners in 1968, Veronika Rücker, as chairwoman of the board of the German Olympic Sports Confederation, declared in August 2018, without specifically addressing any rehabilitation of the athletes, that the events surrounding the skating scandal "sounded more than adventurous and very strong after a violent Cold War. [...] We are firmly convinced that Ortrun Enderlein and her teammates were wronged back then. From our point of view, she would have won a medal. ”The President of the International Luge Federation FIL , Josef Fendt , himself a former German luge rider , had already rejected a sport-political reassessment of the case in 2006 during his tenure.

After the Olympic Games in Grenoble, Enderlein won on 24/25. February 1968 as the best runner in three of four races, the GDR championship title in Friedrichroda ahead of Angela Knösel and Anna-Maria Müller. In August 1968 she was again awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver for her athletic achievements and her "special services to increasing the international reputation of the GDR". At the end of her career, Enderlein no longer achieved the usual top performances due to injury. Damaged by a shoulder injury, she only achieved sixth place in Petra Tierlich's victory at the 1969 Luge World Championships at Königssee, despite the fastest time in the fourth run. A week earlier, she had won the 1969 Alpine Luge Cup in Imst, ahead of Lechner and Knösel . After the GDR championship in Friedrichroda in 1969, where she could not place in the top three, she resigned from competitive sports. Throughout her entire career, she drove only one sled, which she screwed and tinkered with herself. In 2013, she characterized the main differences to modern luge with the fact that in her active time there were “no starting bars, no functional clothing, no visor helmets and no research center for the material”, but as an amateur athlete she also “didn't have to run around like an advertising column ”. Other honors that Enderlein received in the course of her sports career were the appointment as Merited Master of Sports and the award of the Artur Becker Medal .

From 1970 to 1990 Enderlein was a personal member of the NOC of the GDR , from which she was honored in March 1969 with an honorary award and in November 1985 with a golden badge of honor . She was also a member of the presidium of the racing sled and bobsleigh association of the GDR and a member of the National Council of the National Front .

literature

• Olaf W. Reimann:  Enderlein, Ortrun . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Klaus Ullrich : Gold from Innsbruck - sketches about two Olympic champions and their path: Ortrun Enderlein, Thomas Köhler. Society for the Promotion of the Olympic Thought in the German Democratic Republic, Berlin, 1964. DNB 1019135069
• Volker Kluge : The great lexicon of GDR athletes. The 1000 most successful and popular athletes from the GDR, their successes and biographies. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-348-9 , pp. 85, 87-88.
• Günter Weigel: Enderlein, Ortrun m. Zöphel . In: Small chronicle of great athletes . Erzgebirge we are proud of. Rockstroh, Aue 2004, p. 72 .

Web links

Commons : Ortrun Enderlein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ortrun Enderlein in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Fraud on skids? - The 1968 Grenoble scandal

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} ND v. February 5, 1964, p. 8.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Enderlein, Ortrun m. Zöphel. In: Günter Weigel: A small chronicle of great athletes - Erzgebirge we are proud of. Rockstroh, Aue, 2004, p. 72.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Thomas Schmidt: Congratulations despite stolen gold medal. In: local edition Schwarzenberg. Freie Presse , December 4, 2013, p. 16 , accessed on February 6, 2014 . 
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Klaus Ullrich: Gold from Innsbruck . Sketches about two Olympic champions and their path: Ortrun Enderlein, Thomas Köhler. Ed .: Society for the Promotion of the Olympic Thought in the German Democratic Republic. Berlin 1964, DNB  1019135069 , p. 35-60 .
5. ↑ ^{a b} ND v. June 17, 1964, p. 4.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Olaf W. Reimann:  Enderlein, Ortrun . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Friedhard Teuffel: Snow that melts on runners. Retrieved February 6, 2014 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} ND v. September 7, 1984, p. 7.
9. ↑ ND v. February 6, 1964, p. 8.
10. ^ Siegfried Huebschmann: Raschau . About the becoming and growing of a church. Ed .: Council of the community of Raschau. Raschau 1990, p. 70 (published on the occasion of the 750th anniversary).
11. ↑ ND v. January 22, 1963, p. 8.
12. ↑ ND v. February 25, 1963, p. 4.
13. ^ ^{A b} Society for the Promotion of the Olympic Thought in the German Democratic Republic (ed.): IX. Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1964 . Sportverlag, Berlin 1964, p. 75 ff., 165 .
14. ^ ^{A b c} Volker Kluge: The large lexicon of GDR athletes . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-348-9 , pp. 85, 87-88 .
15. ↑ ND v. February 17, 1964, p. 3.
16. ↑ ND v. February 23, 1964 and February 24, 1964, p. 4.
17. ↑ ND v. February 27, 1964, p. 6.
18. ↑ ND v. June 10, 1964, p. 5.
19. ↑ ND v. February 8, 1965, p. 4.
20. ↑ ND v. February 15, 1965, p. 4.
21. ↑ ND v. December 24, 1965, p. 8.
22. ^ Siegfried Huebschmann: Raschau . About the becoming and growing of a church. Ed .: Council of the community of Raschau. Raschau 1990, p. 70 (published on the occasion of the 750th anniversary). , P. 72
23. ↑ ND v. February 20, 1967, p. 6.
24. ↑ ND v. February 22, 1967, p. 8.
25. ↑ ND v. February 25, 1967, p. 8.
26. ↑ ^{a b c d} Society for the Promotion of the Olympic Thought in the German Democratic Republic (ed.): X. Olympic Winter Games Grenoble 1968 . Sportverlag, Berlin 1968, p. 31 ff., 165 .
27. ↑ ND v. January 15, 1968, p. 5.
28. ↑ ^{a b} Wolf-Sören Treusch: Olympic Winter Games 1968 in Grenoble: "Allemagne" against "East Germany" Deutschlandfunk Kultur , February 11, 2018.
29. ↑ According to ND v. February 20, 1967, p. 6, Hörnlein had prepared his sled for the race in a heated work tent at the 1967 World Championships and had appeared at the start with the runners not yet cooled down.
30. ^ GDR team. Gray pearls. In: Der Spiegel. February 19, 1968, accessed February 6, 2014 . 
31. ↑ Fraud on skids? The 1968 Grenoble scandal. MDR , accessed February 6, 2014 . 
32. ↑ Johannes Weberling / Giselher Spitzer (eds.): Virtual reconstruction of "pre-destroyed" Stasi documents: Technological feasibility and financial feasibility - conclusions for science, forensic technology and journalism. (Series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR Volume 21) 2. A., Berlin 1997, pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-3-934085-23-7
33. ^ Giselher Spitzer: Sports backup process. The Ministry of State Security and elite sport. (Series of publications by the Federal Institute for Sport Science Volume 97), Bonn 2005, p. 104. ISBN 3-7780-8971-4
34. ↑ Luge Olympic champion Müller dead. Focus, accessed on February 6, 2014 (reporting on the death of the disqualified runner-up Anna-Maria Müller). 
35. ↑ ^{a b} Died. Anna-Maria Müller. In: Der Spiegel. September 7, 2009, accessed February 6, 2014 . 
36. ↑ Volker Kluge : "You were really only betrayed": 50 years ago, women from the GDR were denied Olympic gold and silver. One of the beneficiaries of the disqualification suffered. Sächsische Zeitung of February 6, 2018, accessed on February 8, 2018.
37. ↑ Ulrich Gerecke: Hot runners, cold war. Allgemeine Zeitung of February 7, 2018, accessed on February 8, 2018 (similar wording also appeared in other newspapers).
38. ↑ Volker Kluge, Tino Meyer: Warm runners, cold war: GDR luge Ortrun Enderlein was robbed of Olympic gold in 1968. Now the association apologizes - a little . Sächsische Zeitung of September 4, 2018, p. 12.
39. ↑ Thomas Köhler: GDR female tobogganists have been wronged . RotFuchs , 21 (2018), No. 251, p. 31.
40. ↑ ND v. February 26, 1968, p. 4.
41. ↑ ND v. August 30, 1968, p. 8.
42. ↑ ND v. February 3, 1969, p. 6.
43. ↑ Egon Theiner: 50 years FIL . Ed .: FIS. Volume II: Statistics . Vienna 2007, p. 275 .
44. ↑ ND v. February 22, 1969, p. 8.
45. ^ Election to the NOK on September 10, 1970 at the general meeting of the NOK of the GDR according to ND v. September 12, 1970, p. 8.
46. ↑ ND v. March 30, 1969, p. 6.
47. ↑ ND v. 9/10 November 1985, p. 15.
48. ↑ ND v. April 28, 1987, p. 7.

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 24, 2012 .