Peter Krohn

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Peter Krohn (born March 16, 1932 in Hamburg ; † April 1, 2021 ) was a German newspaper publisher and football official . As president and then general manager of the then financially troubled Hamburger SV between 1973 and 1977, he succeeded in restructuring and led the club to winning the DFB Cup in 1976 and in the European Cup Winners' Cup from 1977 as well as to the German runner-up in 1976.

Initial career

Peter Krohn studied economics at the University of Hamburg . After graduating as a business graduate , he did his doctorate in 1959 under Karl Schiller with a dissertation on direct imports to the Dr. rer. pole. Krohn then began his career with management training at the mineral oil company Esso . He then became the authorized signatory of the Axel Springer Verlag newspaper Die Welt and was soon promoted to the board of directors of the entire company. After a stopover at Otto-Versand in Hamburg , in 1971 he succeeded Gustav Schmidt-Küster as head of the SPD- owned Hannoversche Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft and thus the publisher of their ailing papers Hannoversche Presse and Hannoversche Rundschau , which became the Neue Hannoversche Presse that same year were merged. Local editions such as Hildesheimer Presse and Göttinger Presse were sold. He was soon appointed editor-in-chief, which among other things earned him criticism from the German Association of Journalists for breaking the editorial statute. Senior editors and the management team formally stood behind him in unison . However, numerous journalists and editors resigned, some involuntarily. Krohn drew attention to itself through controversial individual editorial instructions and marketing measures. The SPD complained about depoliticization. Approaching the style of tabloids earned him the internal nickname "Kroenisch", based on the former Bild newspaper editor -in- chief Peter Boenisch . In 1972, after two years of losses - Krohn was accused of having made around five million marks in 1971 and another four million marks in 1972 - three days before Christmas he was given notice. Krohn was a member of the SPD, which he once joined on a “student's whim”, but, according to his own statement, let his membership expire by stopping the payment of contributions.

Time at Hamburger SV

From president to general manager

Peter Krohn, whose father Hans Krohn was in the championship teams of Hamburger SV from 1922 and 1923, joined HSV on February 1, 1967. On November 26, 1973, Krohn was surprisingly clear in the Hamburg Curiohaus with 379 votes in a battle vote against Paul Benthien , who received 95 of the 478 votes cast, as the successor to Dr. Horst Barrelet elected 27th President of the Hamburger Sportverein . His election was seen as a "leap into a new HSV era". Among other things, Krohn's program included the integration of the club, which was once in debt with DM 3.4 million and which had ranked between 10th and 14th in the Bundesliga in the previous three seasons, with HSV Ochsenzoll , the formally independent sponsoring association of real estate and the training facilities of the Association to expand the credit line.

As early as January 1974, he signed a contract with a spirits importer with a total value of two million marks to advertise the Italian Campari aperitif on Hamburger SV jerseys for the next two and a half years . After the Braunschweig TSV Eintracht , which reached a corresponding agreement with the German spirits manufacturer Jägermeister the year before , the club was the second Bundesliga club in Germany to use jersey advertising as a source of income.

Krohn's presidency ended with his resignation on July 1, 1975 after his request to be paid as “executive president” at the annual general meeting in June had failed. His successor as President was, initially acting, Paul Benthien. Krohn's new position was general manager, the first in this role at the club. His salary is given here as DM 150,000 and is said to have amounted to up to DM 300,000 per year, including premiums set by himself, the same as the players. During this phase, he once described himself as the club's fourth best-paid employee.

Pioneer of football as a show business

Krohn was considered one of the first, if not the first, supporters of the idea of ​​football as show business in Germany. According to the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper , Krohn was "way ahead of his time". For Krohn, the playing field was "an opera stage, the stadium a temple of the muses". Krohn was called an idea producer. Krohn has led the club into a “new dimension, a symbiosis of sport and show”. He had "in the style of a revolutionary" defied "the idyll of tradition" and made the HSV a branded product. Accordingly, he introduced so-called “show training”, in which Bavarian brass bands played in the kick-off circle, stupid bards like Mike Krüger performed and elephant rides were part of the offer, which attracted five-digit audience numbers. The press spoke of the "Krohn Circus". To attract more women to games, the team competed in pink and baby blue jerseys in 1976/77. The method was to keep HSV talking. The success proved Krohn right. While 17,000 to 18,000 spectators came to the Bundesliga games in the Volksparkstadion in the last seasons before Krohn took office, the club, under Krohn's aegis, attracted an average of 31,000 to 34,000. The term “friendly games” became a thing of the past under Krohn. In January 1977, cup winners HSV played against the champions Borussia Mönchengladbach for the first, still unofficial German Supercup and before the start of the 1977/78 season, the European championship champions, Liverpool FC , played for the harbor cup in front of a sold out house . For his marketing of football, Krohn was criticized, among others, by former national coach Sepp Herberger , who demanded that Krohn should keep his hands off football.

Star purchases

These measures allowed the club to hire the English superstar Kevin Keegan for 2.2 million marks from Liverpool in 1977 . Krohn said the audience should not be fobbed off with a boys' choir, but had a right to stars. As early as 1974, the transfer of striker Willi Reimann from Hannover 96 for DM 700,000 to HSV could be accomplished, also thanks to a voluntary surcharge of one mark per standing and two marks per seat. Prominent additions, both free of charge, were 1975 Libero Horst Blankenburg , European Cup winner with Ajax Amsterdam , and the Austrian national player Johann "Buffy" Ettmayer from Bundesliga relegated VfB Stuttgart , both of which did not have a resounding success, but the fine technician Ettmayer soon joined the audience popularized as an original. A three-year contract negotiated by Krohn with national player Paul Breitner , which was supposed to come from Real Madrid for two million marks, but which was found to be too expensive by the presidium in March 1977, did not materialize.

Sporting development

From a sporting point of view, Krohn's motto was “I don't strive for mediocrity.” He asked the coach Kuno Klötzer , who has been in office since 1973 , to make plans for advancing to the top Bundesliga places. Krohn was also well known for trying to talk the coach into the line-up. “It's always just suggestions,” said Krohn. After HSV finished the Bundesliga in 10th and 14th place in the previous two seasons, after six months of presidency it was only enough for twelfth place. In 1975, Hamburg was already in fourth place, the best Bundesliga placement up to that point. In the UEFA Cup , for which HSV qualified as one of the winners of the Intertoto Cup , they made it to the quarter-finals where respectable results were achieved against Juventus Turin with 2-0 and 0-0. In the following season they even made it into the semi-finals, where HSV narrowly knocked out against the Belgian club Bruges, trained by Ernst Happel , 1: 1 and 0: 1. The German runner-up behind the defending champions from Mönchengladbach was also a great success, the greatest success in this competition since winning the title in 1960. The cup win with a 2-0 win in the Frankfurt Waldstadion against 1. FC Kaiserslautern qualified the Hanseatic League for the European Cup Winners' Cup. There, HSV defeated the defending champions RSC Anderlecht on May 11, 1977 in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam with goals from Schorsch Volkert and Felix Magath , who was signed as a talent at the start of the season, 2-0 in the last twelve minutes - the biggest success of Hamburg and the then Third success of a Bundesliga club in this competition.

In the Bundesliga, things went less well for HSV. After a 12th place in the first half of the season, the team strengthened with Arno Steffenhagen and the young Felix Magath came in 6th. Krohn was booed for the first time and the press became increasingly critical. The trainer was able to enjoy "Kuno, Kuno!" Shouts. Krohn said, “I like him, even though he's the old gym teacher type. He already enjoys sympathy just because his name is Kuno, ”but Klötzer's days at HSV were numbered. He signed a contract with Hertha BSC before the European Cup final , even though this brought him a reduction in his monthly salary from DM 8,000 to DM 7,000. Klötzer was nevertheless relieved: “Nobody will interfere with my work. I am solely responsible for purely sporting matters. "

In his place, Krohn had already hired Rudi Gutendorf , who, according to his own admission, is the “bird of paradise among coaches”, for a monthly salary of DM 11,000. The press first reported on it on April 7, 1977. Krohn later discovered that the contract was signed on his birthday, March 16, and said "I have finally found the perfect partner". Gutendorf promised “We will present total football. My psychological knowledge allows me to address each player individually. "

The season started with a 2: 5 defeat at MSV Duisburg , in which the German national player Bernard Dietz did not let the new HSV star Kevin Keegan develop, clearly in the pants. After a series of four wins, mixed results followed, including a 2-0 home defeat against newly promoted and local rivals FC St. Pauli in the Volksparkstadion at home . The situation worsened in mid-October. A 4-0 defeat at Eintracht Braunschweig for star Paul Breitner was followed by a 2-1 home defeat against RSC Anderlecht in defense of the Cup Winners' Cup. After three days later a defeat in the same amount against the underestimated team of 1.FC Saarbrücken followed in the Bundesliga , Gutendorf's days, to whom the team showed little love, were numbered and Krohn demanded his dismissal from the presidium, which in the end led to the termination of the contract. Youth coach Arkoç Özcan , still a goalkeeper at HSV at the beginning of the decade, became the first Turkish Bundesliga coach . Krohn's position, already controversial in the press and the club, could no longer be held and he asked for his contract to be terminated at the end of the month, which was accepted. He left a cash amount of DM 700,000. HSV finished the season in tenth place. Günter Netzer , European champion with the national team in 1972, became Krohn's successor as manager at the turn of the year, albeit with a significantly reduced scope of duties and a salary of only DM 8,000 per month.

After leaving as general manager

Peter Krohn became a self-employed PR consultant and appeared as a “model figure in whiskey advertising on the front pages of the tabloid press.” From 1985 on, he was a lecturer in sports management at the Institute for Sports Science at the Georg-August University in Göttingen with Arnd Krüger and was instrumental in the development of the major involved.

In 1979, Krohn tried a second time for the office of president of the club, which had won the championship that year for the first time since 1960. At the annual general meeting on December 18, he ran against Wolfgang Klein, who was preferred by the outgoing President Paul Benthien . Club legend Uwe Seeler , manager Netzer and trainer Branko Zebec also spoke out against Krohn. Klein was eventually elected with 760 against 235 votes. The years up to 1987 were to be the most successful era of the club with two further championships, four runner-up championships and the victory in the European Cup of National Champions in 1983 (after an unsuccessful final in 1980). This ended with the departure of the Austrian trainer Ernst Happel, who was brought in 1981, in 1987. During this time, however, there was already a steady decline in the financial strength of the Hanseatic League.

In the second half of the 1990s, Krohn was a distinguished opponent of the outsourcing of professional gaming operations into a stock corporation, similar to the example of Borussia Dortmund at the time . On November 30, 1998, after an "enthusiastically celebrated speech", Krohn was elected to the supervisory board with 441 of 608 votes at the club's annual general meeting, which primarily dealt with the new stadium construction, possible restructuring and its unfortunate financial situation; the next best candidate, Bernd Enge, received 283 votes. At the beginning of 2001, Krohn became deputy chairman of the committee, from which he withdrew on June 21 of that year because of “health problems that had existed for some time”.

Krohn, married to the economist Doris for over half a century, should continue to be a regular guest at the association's annual general meetings and draw attention with his speeches. During the heated AGM of 2012, he left the meeting early. On April 1, 2021, just 16 days after his wife, Krohn died at the age of 89.

Tabellarium

Functions

  • President: November 26, 1973 - June 30, 1975
  • General Manager: 1976–1977
  • Supervisory Board: 1998–2001

Sporting successes as president and manager

  • DFB Cup finalist 1975
  • DFB Cup 1976
  • European Cup Winners' Cup 1977
  • German runner-up in 1976

Individual evidence
  1. ↑ Jürgen Werner: He would also stand upside down , Die Zeit , November 14, 1975.
  2. ^ Press: Precise Answer , Der Spiegel , 3/1973, January 15, 1973.
  3. ^ Like a thunderstorm, Der Spiegel, 43/1974, October 21, 1974.
  4. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt , November 27, 1973, p. 17.
  5. ↑ a b c Horst Wisser: The man who was way ahead of his time. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. August 8, 1987, accessed December 30, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Hamburger Abendblatt, May 2, 1977, p. 14.
  7. ↑ Nothing more on it , Der Spiegel 29/1977.
  8. ↑ Who is afraid of Peter Krohn? Die Zeit, December 14, 1979.
  9. ^ Arnd Krüger : Marketing in Sport. Non-Profit or For-Profit? In: dvs information 3/1995, p. 35 (PDF, 92KB)
  10. ↑ Klein is number 1 at HSV , Hamburger Abendblatt, December 19, 1979, p. 1.
  11. ^ Matthias Linnenbrügger: With Krohn, an opponent of HSV-Aktiengesellschaft is eliminated , Die Welt , June 25, 2001.
  12. ↑ The HSV mourns the loss of Dr. Peter Krohn. In: hsv.de. April 2, 2021, accessed April 4, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Krohn, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German newspaper publisher and football official
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 2021