Rainer Baumann (soccer player)

Rainer "Röhre" Baumann (born January 21, 1930 in Altenburg ) was a soccer player in the GDR and was twice on the GDR national soccer team .

Soccer career

Steel Altenburg

Rainer Baumann lived in the East Thuringian city of Altenburg until he was 21 years old. In the period before the Second World War, the Eintracht 08 Altenburg club had the most successful football team there. Baumann also started playing organized football here at the age of ten. After the war, the club had to be dissolved, and the company sports club Stahl Altenburg was founded in 1950 through the stations Sportgemeinschaft Altenburg-Nord and ZSG Altenburg . Already in 1949 the Altenburger qualified for the games for the 2nd Eastern Zone Championship . However, they failed in the elimination round 3: 4 against Eintracht Stendal . The then 19-year-old Baumann shot the interim 1: 1. By participating in the East Zone Championship, the Altenburgers were entitled to participate in the newly founded Oberliga , the highest East German soccer class. In the two seasons that Baumann played with his team in the major league until 1951, he was used 41 times in the 60 played point games, mostly in midfield and scored six goals.

Forward Leipzig / Forward Berlin

For the football season 1951/52 Baumann moved to the current GDR football champion Chemie Leipzig . After the successful season with a third place Baumann got caught in the maelstrom of the confused GDR sports policy, which led to chaotic conditions, especially in Leipzig. In the autumn of 1952 Baumann came under the sights of the sports association Vorwärts Leipzig , founded in 1951 , the central football focus of the barracked people's police . Without athletic qualifications, the forward team was immediately classified in the GDR upper league in 1951, but achieved an unsatisfactory result with rank 15. In order to improve the quality of the squad, SV Vorwärts began to woo players away from local rivals Chemie in the middle of the 1952/53 season. Baumann was one of the eight chemistry players who switched to the forward team in December 1952. Previously, he had played 38 league games with five goals for the chemists. Despite the poached national players Eilitz , Scherbaum and Fröhlich , the athletic performance of the forward team did not improve, which had also drawn the ire of Leipzig football fans because of their poaching methods. The central sports association Vorwärts then decided to move the team to Berlin, where it had to compete as ZASK Vorwärts Berlin from April 1953 .

In Berlin, too, the team's performance did not improve, they only reached 14th place in the upper league, equivalent to being relegated to the second division. After five years in the league, this was a major setback for Baumann. Although Vorwärts Berlin was early on as a newcomer and won the GDR soccer cup with Baumann on July 3, 1954 with a 2-1 victory over Motor Zwickau , the conditions within the ZASK were not only frustrating for Baumann. So the players had to z. B. commute constantly between her residence in Leipzig and Berlin. After the cup final, Baumann and his teammates Fröhlich and Helbig declared that they no longer wanted to play for ZASK in the future. For the Central Army Sports Club this was tantamount to deserting, and when Baumann heavily criticized the behavior of the club officials after a tour of the Soviet Union, the measure was full and Baumann was expelled from the ZASK and suspended for one year.

SC Lok Leipzig

Baumann had already reached an agreement beforehand with SC Lok Leipzig, the successor to his former chemistry team, about his return. As a result of the suspension, which also prohibited training with the Leipzig league team in the first few months, Baumann was not available to his new team for the time being. It was not until March 6, 1955 that he played his first game for SC Lok in a friendly against the Polish army club CWKS Warsaw (2-2). A week later he played in the league game against progress Meerane (2-0). As a game designer in midfield, he immediately had a regular place and shone with excellent performances. Therefore, the GDR sports management could not avoid giving the former sinner a chance in the national team. Baumann played his first international match on July 22, 1956, when Poland - GDR met. After the 2-0 victory of the GDR team, the "Deutsche Sportecho" reported: "Baumann fulfilled his task as a switch station in midfield with distinction." On October 14th of the same year, he received another chance in the international match against Bulgaria. This game was lost 3-1 in Sofia, and Baumann, who was substituted in the 69th minute, complained afterwards about the lack of support from his teammates in the unfamiliar position of the left forward striker. This ended his career in the national team, it was only followed by a deployment in the B-team. At the end of the 1956 season, he and his locomotive team took third place in the league for the second time in his career. Baumann was unlucky in 1957 when Lok Leipzig won the GDR soccer cup, but he was unable to play in the final. In 1958 the Lok footballers reached the cup final again, and in the game against Einheit Dresden Baumann was also on the field, but lost with his team 1: 2. Baumann played for Lok Leipzig in the top league until 1961 and made 95 appearances with this team. He ended his active career in 1963 with the fourth division chemistry Leipzig-West.

Overview of stations

1940-1945	Eintracht 08 Altenburg
1946-1951	SG / BSG Stahl Altenburg	Oberliga
1951-1952	BSG Chemie Leipzig	Oberliga
1952-1953	SV Forward KVP Leipzig	Oberliga
1953-1954	ZASK Forward Berlin	Oberliga, GDR League
1955-1961	SC Lok Leipzig	Oberliga
1961-1963	BSG Chemie Leipzig-West	District class

Further life

Even during his time as a football player, Baumann had studied journalism from 1953 to 1957 at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, which he completed as a qualified journalist. After his football career, he first worked from 1963 as editor-in-chief for the magazine “ Theory and Practice of Body Culture ” and later as a specialist journalist for the sports newspapers “ Deutsches Sportecho ” and “ Neue Fußballwoche ”. He also continued to devote himself to football, initially coordinating youth football in the Leipzig district and then working for several years as an assistant coach for the GDR junior national team. Most recently, Baumann was head of the tennis department at SV LVB Leipzig.

literature

• Hanns Leske : Encyclopedia of GDR football . Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89533-556-3 .
• Michael Horn, Gottfried Weise : The great lexicon of GDR football. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89602-536-8 .
• Andreas Baingo, Michael Horn: The History of the GDR Oberliga. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89533-428-6 .
• Uwe Nuttelmann (Ed.): GDR Oberliga. 1962-1991. Self-published, Jade 2007, ISBN 978-3-930814-33-6 .
• GDR sports newspaper Deutsches Sportecho , August 13, 1966, biography

Web links

• Rainer Baumann in the database of weltfussball.de