Otto Faist

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Otto Faist (born March 11, 1903 in Karlsruhe , † February 1946 in Kowel , Soviet Union ) was a German athlete and football coach .

life and career

Faist was an active athlete for the Karlsruhe FC Phönix , who made a name for himself as a runner on the short and medium distances. According to his son, he was the first German athlete to compete in Paris after the First World War. In 1925 and 1926 he was appointed to the national team. With the Phönix Sprint relay he became German champion in 1926. In the same year he began studying at the German University for Physical Education in Berlin under what would later become the Reich trainer Otto Nerz , which he completed in 1929 as a certified sports teacher. In 1928 he had previously become German runner-up in the sprint relay of the Berlin SC Charlottenburg .

Faist's coaching career began in 1930 at SV Wiesbaden . A year later he went to Bulgaria, where he looked after the national team. With six wins in six games, he led the team to the Balkan Championship. After returning to the German Reich in 1932/33, he initially worked for the Cologne Sports Club in 1899 . He then worked partly part-time here and at several other clubs in the west until 1937: at Wattenscheider SV Höntrop , Duisburger FV 08 and SVA Gütersloh ; Arminia Bielefeld leads him as a coach from 1933 to 1935. For the 1937/38 season, Rot-Weiß Oberhausen signed him , where the "excellent sports teacher" could not meet expectations, mainly due to a series of injuries among his players and was dismissed in 1938. He then replaced master coach "Bumbes" Schmidt at FC Schalke 04 . With the Royal Blues he won three German championships in 1939 , 1940 and 1942 ; he also reached the final of the Tschammer Cup twice with the team .

Faist was a "staunch supporter of Adolf Hitler" and joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933. In January 1942 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht , but received special leave for the championship finals. The Air Force used him as a trainer for LSV Mölders Krakow , which won the General Government Cup under him in 1943 and 1944 . In a letter from March 1945, the front soldier Faist writes of “believing in our final victory”. But while fleeing from the Eastern Front, the experiences of misery made him realize that the regime of the Third Reich was a criminal one. In what is now Saxony he was taken prisoner by the Soviets and was initially taken to the Elsterhorst camp , and later to the Kovel prison camp in the Ukrainian SSR . Here he died of typhoid and exhaustion in February 1946 . The exact day of his death is as unknown as the place of his final resting place. His widow and three children did not receive news of his death until April 1948.

Notes and evidence

  1. ^ According to military records, Faist fell on February 1, 1945. Other statements speak of a death in a Soviet prisoner-of-war . Stefan Goch / Norbert Silberbach: “Between blue and white lies gray”, p. 338; Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-433-6 . According to the article “Looking for traces” in the Schalke Kreisel on April 28, 2012, “an affidavit […] dates his death to February 1946”. In March 1945 he wrote a letter to his wife.
  2. ↑ a b Looking for traces , in: Schalker Kreisel , Official Club Magazine, Season 2011/2012 No. 24 from April 28, 2012, p. 66
  3. ↑ Ernst Otto Bräunche, Volker Steck (ed.), Sport in Karlsruhe: from the beginning until today ; Publications of the Karlsruhe City Archives Vol. 28, 2006, ISBN 3-88190-440-9 , p. 258; Online version viewed December 4, 2009
  4. ^ Arminia Bielefeld, trainer archive
  5. ↑ Chronicle, season 1937/38 ( Memento of the original from August 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the RWO website @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rwo-online.de
  6. ↑ Looking for traces , in: Schalker Kreisel , Official Club Magazine, Season 2011/2012 No. 24 of April 28, 2012, p. 61
  7. ↑ Stefan Goch / Norbert Silberbach: "Between blue and white lies gray", p. 154; Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-433-6
  8. ^ Warschauer Zeitung, November 7, 1943, p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Faist, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German athlete and football coach
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH February 1946
Place of death Kovel , Ukrainian SSR , Soviet Union