Riederwald Stadium
| Stadium at the Riederwald | |
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| Stadium am Riederwald in Frankfurt-Seckbach , view of the grandstand, in the background from left to right: Housing of the A 661 at Seckbacher Landstrasse / Heinz-Herbert-Karry-Strasse, Hufeland-Haus at Wilhelmshöher Strasse , Accident Clinic Frankfurt am Main am Main Huthpark , Seckbacher Atzelberg with skyscrapers, photo: 2007 | |
| Data | |
| place |
 Frankfurt am Main , Germany
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| Coordinates | 50 ° 7 '59 " N , 8 ° 43' 49" E |
| opening | 1952 (1920) |
| First game | August 17, 1952 (September 5, 1920) |
| Renovations | 1937/38 after the grandstand fire |
| demolition | October / November 1943 after bomb damage |
| costs | 300,000 Reichsmarks (1920) |
| capacity | 6,000 (30,000) |
| playing area | Natural grass |
| Societies) | |
The name Stadion am Riederwald or Riederwaldstadion historically refers to two different sports facilities in Frankfurt am Main . The current stadium was 1952-1980 for home games of the Oberliga- or later Bundesliga - football team of Eintracht Frankfurt and their training used, but also for athletics -Wettkämpfe and many other events.
location
The first of the two sports facilities was in the Bornheim district of Frankfurt from 1920 to 1943 , separated from Ostpark and Riederwald by just one street , the latter serving as the namesake. The currently still existing second sports facility with the same name is located in the Seckbach district , the old name has been retained for reasons of tradition. The original name Stadion am Riederwald is in any case the more appropriate, because the sports area was never in the actual Riederwald, but on the Riederwald, i.e. in its vicinity. This still applies today, because the site almost touches the boundary of the Riederwald district, which runs through the middle of the relic of the Erlenbruch. The assignment of the stadium to the Riederwald district, made by the majority of the population, is demonstrably incorrect on the basis of the district boundaries.
history
Old stadium at the Riederwald
Weimar Republic (1919–1933)
The stadium at the Riederwald of TuS Eintracht Frankfurt was built directly after the end of the First World War on Ratsweg 14 opposite the Ostpark just below the Bornheimer slope , a ridge. On the new stadium site was a 400-meter running track, a 120-meter straight, three tennis courts , a racquetball field , a hockey field , a football -Übungsfeld, a turn - and a Fistball space created.
For the club, which was founded in 1899 under the name Frankfurter Fußball-Club Victoria in 1899 , the construction costs of 300,000 Reichsmarks represented a huge investment. Six months before the stadium opened, it merged with the Frankfurt gymnastics community, founded in 1861 which gave rise to the new name Eintracht Frankfurt. At that time, the association had 2,250 members. Sports options include boxing , cricket , fencing , soccer , handball , hockey , athletics , rugby , swimming , tennis and gymnastics .
On September 5, 1920, the stadium in Riederwald was inaugurated with a game between Eintracht Frankfurt and Freiburg (1: 1) and a grand opening ceremony. At the time, the new stadium was the largest club-owned sports facility in Germany; it offered space for 30,000 spectators, 1,600 seats were covered. The trade journal Der Fußball described the Eintracht spectator stands as "an almost gigantic-looking grandstand by German standards ". In March 1922, the first international football match that ever took place in the Frankfurt city area took place here.
There was a two-room apartment inside the wooden grandstand. After 1928, a house with four rooms was built next to the grandstand.
Third Reich (1933–1945)
During the time of National Socialism, Eintracht Frankfurt, like some other clubs (e.g. SC Frankfurt 1880 ), was often insulted as a Jewish association , the athletes and members in Frankfurt dialect as the Juddebube (Jewish boys). This was due to previous generous donations by Jewish business people in favor of the association, who have always acted as patrons in Frankfurt .
A prominent example of this was the support documented since the mid-1920s by the Jewish owners of the Frankfurt shoe factory J. & CA Schneider . Six first division football players from the club, Karl Ehmer, Rudolf Gramlich, Willi Lindner, Hugo Mantel, Franz Schütz and Hans Stubb, were employed in the factory around 1935. Official payment of the first division players was not yet allowed, so they were either given money under the hand or sponsored by the club by arranging a job. The shoe factory, run by the brothers Fritz and Lothar Adler and their cousin Walter Neumann , mainly produced slippers, which in Frankfurt dialect are sloppy . The Eintracht footballers still carry the name Schlappekicker today . In the whole of Frankfurt has been Stadium on Riederwald as venues of football matches of Schlappekicker a term that is common despite often lack knowledge of the relationships in Germany to this day and also by the Schlappekicker action and the Schlappekicker Prize of the Frankfurter Rundschau continue to use was spread. The term is often misinterpreted and used because of the lack of knowledge about the historical and dialect roots of the term, namely in the sense of "weak kickers" (= weak football players).
The grandstand of the stadium in Riederwald burned down to the ground during the night of July 18-19, 1936, as did the adjacent house, which was uninhabitable from that point on. During the reconstruction, the active found an alternative in the neighboring stadium of the competing football sports club Frankfurt (FSV Frankfurt), also on Bornheimer slope. The newly built grandstand of the stadium in Riederwald could be used again after more than a year from September 5, 1937 with the game Eintracht Frankfurt against Fortuna Düsseldorf (1: 5). In March 1938, the self-proclaimed eagle bearers, whose name is derived from the Frankfurt heraldic animal or the eagle of the club's coat of arms, won the Gau Southwest Championship (4: 2).
The Institute for Urban History of the City of Frankfurt am Main documents the placement of 22 forced laborers from Russia, including a woman, on the grounds of the stadium on September 21, 1942, and in 1943 another 25 forced laborers from Ukraine were recorded. They had to work for Auto-Foam at Hanauer Landstrasse 295.
The joy of building the new grandstand was relatively short-lived, however, because only six years later the entire facility was destroyed by a night bomb attack in October 1943 during the Second World War . On November 16 of the same year, the Frankfurt Sports Office informed the club that the city administration would use the stadium area as an interim storage facility for the rubble of the industrial site along Hanauer Landstrasse , which was also destroyed . Five days later, on November 21, the first rubble was dumped on the grounds of the stadium in Riederwald. The sports facility could no longer be used. During the war, football games were sometimes played in a syndicate with FSV Frankfurt, but also because too few players were available due to military service.
post war period
After the war ended, the club's hopes of ever being able to use the Riederwald stadium again were finally destroyed. For many years, the city settled on the site the processing and recycling plant for rubble of the non-profit Trümmerverwertungsgesellschaft (TVG), which used the rubble to produce building material for the large-scale destruction of Frankfurt, which was to be rebuilt. In the beginning, the legendary Frankfurt “Trümmerexpress”, a light rail or small train that carried rubble from the city center, even ended on the stadium grounds. It contributed to the fact that roads were relatively quickly accessible again. After the demolition of the rubble recycling company production facility in 1964, the Frankfurt Dippemess took place for the first time in 1968 on the site of the former stadium in Riederwald. Today the Frankfurt ice rink is also located there .
New stadium at the Riederwald in Seckbach
After the end of the war, a long search began for a new area for the Eintracht sports facilities, which was finally found in the Seckbacher district, not that far from the old stadium area and again near the Riederwald, north of the Erlenbruch. The Lord Mayor of Frankfurt, Dr. Walter Kolb , finally broke ground on November 12, 1949. After the largely natural reed area had been leveled, its preparation and layout, construction of the grandstand began in April 1952 and was to be 111 meters long. After just eight weeks of construction in day and night shifts, the shell was completed. Tennis courts and a Eintracht office building were also built nearby.
The inauguration of the new stadium, which in memory of the old stadium is again called Stadion am Riederwald, took place on August 17, 1952 with a game of unity against the Olympic team of Egypt (1: 4). However, the first real test of the new stadium came a good six months later, when on March 8, 1953, the 54th birthday of Eintracht, 40,000 spectators cheered a 4-0 win against 1. FC Nürnberg , including a corner from Alfred who was directly transformed Pfaff . In 1953, Eintracht won the South German championship in the newly created stadium at Riederwald.
The stadium at the Riederwald often served as a backdrop for TV and photo recordings. The club members have fond memories of the film documentary Die Meistermannschaft, made in 1959 , which portrays the successful team after the German championship during training. Many team and player photos for collective pictures were taken in the stadium, eagerly bought and pasted into scrapbooks by children, young people and adults. In autumn, the spectators picked blackberries from the bushes in the curve of the stadium , a welcome gift from nature that gave a visit to the stadium at Riederwald and the sporting events a special touch. The area in the Seckbacher Niederung, formerly designed by an oxbow lake of the Main , is swampy, however, and groundwater repeatedly penetrates the grandstands. The groundskeeper remedied this by planting poplar trees , which absorb plenty of water and help regulate the problem.
By participating in the final round of the German soccer championship in Frankfurt's Waldstadion , the club received income from 121,500 spectators from two games. This led to the planning and execution of a self-supporting prestressed concrete construction for two grandstand wings of the stadium at Riederwald, which was unique in Germany at the time. In 1956, one of the first modern-style floodlights in the stadium was financed and built instead of incandescent lamps based on fluorescent tubes . In 1957, Eintracht against FC Schalke 04 even won the German floodlight cup .
The US Army Field Band of the V. US Corps presented itself in the Riederwald Stadium on the eve of the American Independence Day on July 3, 1957 with 100 musicians and 21 pieces of music.
The introduction of the Bundesliga in Germany in 1963 brought a change: the Eintracht professional team now played their Bundesliga home games in the larger Waldstadion in Frankfurt . A tennis boom began in the late 1960s. Dedicated club members rescued benches in the main grandstand from the Waldstadion, which was under renovation, and with their help turned tennis court 1 on the area of the stadium at Riederwald into a center court with 800 seats. At the beginning of 1969 the first air dome was built in order to be able to play tennis even in bad weather.
In 1973 a synthetic running track was laid, on which the Austrian Maria Sykora set a world record in the 400 meter hurdles in 57.3 seconds in the same year . On August 13, 1975, the 7.25 kg hammer dug into the ground of the Riederwald Stadium after 79.30 meters. This was a world record set by Walter Schmidt .
In 1976 the tennis air dome was torn from its anchoring in a heavy storm and badly damaged. There was no insurance, insurance companies the risk was too high. The damage was estimated at 18,000 DM. In November 1977 a permanent replacement was created with a tennis hall costing 1.2 million DM, which is still in use today.
In 1980 the track was adapted to contemporary requirements with the material Rekortan (based on polyurethane ) and expanded to eight tracks (six in the curves). The last competitive game of the professional football team in the stadium took place on November 4, 1980. A 6-0 win in front of 2,500 spectators against VfB Friedrichshafen paved the way for winning the cup in 1981.
Since this time at the latest, the stadium in Riederwald began to deteriorate. The club was not doing well financially. The city intervened and bought the grandstand from Eintracht. Its collapsing roof was dismantled together with the upper rows of seats in 1988 and 1989. The formerly most modern grandstand in Germany was history.
The Eintracht professionals have not trained at the Riederwald since 2002. At the start of training in 2011/12, the Eintracht professionals returned to the stadium in Riederwald at short notice because the Commerzbank Arena could not be used due to a concert by Herbert Grönemeyer . The last friendly match in the stadium so far took place on January 20, 2007 against Young Boys Bern .
The stadium at Riederwald was retained for the Eintracht amateurs and youth football players as well as other sports. In 2002 and 2008, the promotion of the second soccer team to the regional soccer league was celebrated in the stadium . The former spectator stands in the stadium curves have now been filled in and planted. In the immediate vicinity, at Gustav-Behringer-Strasse 10, is the Eintracht Frankfurt association office.
The new building for the sports center was completed on November 1st, 2010 and officially opened on December 3rd, 2010. The club's office, the sports center with eight apartments for youth players, a multi-purpose sports hall (named after Wolfgang Steubing), an Eintracht Frankfurt fan shop and a restaurant are integrated into the building. The new building cost a total of 14.3 million euros. It was created by the Eintracht-Frankfurt-Fußball-AG, the Eintracht Frankfurt e. V., as well as through grants from the City of Frankfurt , the State of Hesse and private donations.
Transport links
The area of the Riederwaldstadion north of the Erlenbruch lies between Gustav-Behringer-Straße, Haenischstraße, Rotenbuschweg, Straße Am Büttelstück and Straße Am Sausee. It can be reached with Frankfurt's local public transport system. In the immediate vicinity is the above-ground Schäfflestraße underground station, which is served by both the RMV underground line U4 and the U7.
literature
- F. Lerner: Frankfurt am Main and its economy. Ammelburg Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1958.
- Herbert Neumann : Eintracht Frankfurt - The history of a famous sports club . Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-7700-0389-6 .
- Stephan Kuß: Eintracht Frankfurt: 100 years of football and more . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-7973-0690-3 .
- Ulrich Matheja: Schlappekicker and sky striker. The story of Eintracht Frankfurt . Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89533-538-9 .
- Dr. Thomas Bauer: Frankfurt am Ball, Eintracht and FSV - 100 years of football history . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-925850-25-2 .
- Jörg Heinisch: Sausages, bombs, football magic. Eintracht Frankfurt around the world . Agon, 2006, ISBN 3-89784-278-5 .
- Jörg Heinisch: Eintracht Intim: Anecdotes and curiosities from the history of Eintracht Frankfurt . Agon, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89784-337-0 .
- Matthias Thoma: We were the Juddebube: Eintracht Frankfurt in the Nazi era . The workshop, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89533-560-0 .
- Matthias Thoma: Riederwald. Home of unity since 1920 . Eintracht Frankfurt e. V. (Ed.), Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-00-033708-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ District boundaries on frankfurt.de.
- ↑ History Riederwald ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on eintracht-frankfurt.de.
- ↑ The Jewish Club on Adickesallee - The "Eighties" from 1933 to 1945 on frankfurt1933-1945.de.
- ↑ Matthias Thoma: We were the Juddebube: Eintracht Frankfurt in the Nazi era . The workshop, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-89533-560-0 .
- ↑ When the Eintracht kickers were still making slippers in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 18, 2008.
- ↑ Jewish life / persecution of Jews on: ffmhist.de (search term Eintracht Frankfurt)
- ↑ History of the Riederwald district ( Memento of the original from August 25, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on spdnet.sozi.info.
- ^ Coat of arms of the Frankfurter FV (from 1911), the TuS Eintracht Frankfurt (1920), the sports community Eintracht Frankfurt (1967) and the black eagle (1980–1999) .
- ↑ History of Eintracht Frankfurt ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on eintracht-frankfurt.de.
- ↑ Economy and Labor, Forced Labor, tabular overview of forced labor in Frankfurt am Main on ffmhist.de.
- ^ Chronicle of Riederwald accessed on Feb. 24, 2020
- ^ F. Lerner: Frankfurt am Main and its economy . Ammelburg publishing house. Frankfurt am Main 1958.
- ↑ 25 Years Eissporthalle (2006) as a pdf on frankfurt.de, accessed on Feb. 24, 2020
- ↑ Anecdotes from Riederwald ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on eintracht-frankfurt.de.
