Rudolf de la Vigne

Rudolf "Bella" de la Vigne (born December 23, 1920 in Böhmisch Leipa , Czechoslovakia ; † January 2004 ) was a German football player . He is the player who has played the most games in the Oberliga Süd for VfR Mannheim . In 1949 he became German champion with the “Monnemer Lawn Sportsmen” .

War and captivity instead of a football career

De la Vigne, whose family name refers to his Huguenot ancestors, grew up in the Sudetenland and played as a child and adolescent first at the German sports club Böhmisch Leipa , then in neighboring Nový Bor at the German sports club Haida football. According to Knieriem / Grüne, he should have competed for the Warnsdorfer FK in the 1938/39 season - his homeland had just "returned to the Reich" as a result of the Munich Agreement of September 1938 - and with them the final round of the German championship as champion of the newly created Gauliga Sudetenland achieved. If the 18-year-old Rudolf - and not his older brother - actually played there, he could not prevent the WFK from conceding four clear defeats in the four preliminary round group games against Dresdner SC and Schweinfurt 05 .

When he was drafted into the Wehrmacht at the age of 18 or 19 , he received training as a paratrooper and was captured as early as May 1940 during the Western campaign in Rotterdam . Via Great Britain he was brought to Canada to an internment camp , Camp 133 . In the following years he got to know several Mannheim soccer players, Henninger, Jöckel, Langlotz, Müller and Senck, who had been captured together in North Africa and with whom he often played football in the camp. They also gave him the nickname "Bella", which he kept until the end of his career: his family name was too long and difficult to pronounce for them. In February 1946, after almost six years in Camp 133, de la Vigne was released and initially found himself in northern Germany at the then British Munster camp . A return to the now Czech Sudetenland was practically impossible for an "Reich German" and did not seem particularly attractive to him personally, especially since his father no longer lived there either. That is why he made his way to Mannheim , which was more than 80% destroyed by the war , where he met some fellow prisoners again and laced his football boots with them at VfR. This group of players quickly became known as "the Canadians". He also started a commercial apprenticeship.

The league years

Debut and first successes

From the 1945/46 season onwards, VfR Mannheim belonged to the newly created Oberliga Süd, which was the highest German division until the Bundesliga was introduced , and Rudolf de la Vigne soon made a name for himself in this - a remarkable achievement for someone who was only 26 years old in League football had debuted. He probably played his first league game on June 1, 1947, the 33rd match day, in the local derby against SV Waldhof , which the lawn athletes lost 3-0 on their own pitch. His first goal came 14 days later, again in a derby in which VfR had the upper hand this time (3-1 against VfL Neckarau ).

In the team lineups, the name de la Vigne appeared mostly on the left wing position , but he was more of a playmaker than a winger sticking to the sideline. As a newspaper report from 1949 said, he benefited from his “subtle technique”; his style of play was described as "aesthetic" and he was extremely dangerous for goals.

In terms of sport, VfR did not uproot any trees until 1948 - he landed in 14th, 12th and 8th - but at least de la Vigne succeeded in his first full season in 1947/48 when he was fifth on the top scorer list with 21 goals. At the end of this season, it was less the sporting events than the currency reform , i.e. the conversion of the worthless Reichsmark to the DM on June 21, 1948, causing financial turbulence for some football clubs, because although the DFB only had the status of "contract player" when it was re-established Legalized in January 1950, Oberliga kickers were no longer pure amateurs. The state-owned Toto GmbH was founded in May 1948 in Württemberg-Baden, among other things in order to be able to assist the clubs . On their first betting slip on 15./16. May 1948 the Mannheim derby between the SVW and the VfR as game 1 at the top.

1948/49: Five "Canadians" become German champions

In the following year, Mannheim, albeit clearly distanced from the Offenbacher Kickers , was second in the Oberliga, which entitled to participate in the final round of the German championship . In the quarterfinals, the possibly underestimated VfR defeated Hamburger SV in the Waldstadion in Frankfurt sensationally 5-0; de la Vigne had opened the scoring. The offensive orientation that coach Hans “Bumbes” Schmidt brought closer to his team with the simple football wisdom: “People, orientate yourself forward! If the ball is in the opponent's half, we cannot score a goal ” . In the semifinals, his team had to deal with the Offenbachers, against whom they had drawn twice in the major league. The game took place in Gelsenkirchen's Glückauf-Kampfbahn , and this time the left winger scored the last goal of the encounter - his 2: 1 also meant the surprising final of the Mannheim team.

Even against the final opponents Borussia Dortmund were the North Baden as an outsider, even though football fans throughout Germany now (stormed beside de la Vigne in particular the five attackers Fritz Bolleyer , Ernst Langlotz , Ernst Löttke and Kurt stepfather ), but also on the center-half Kurt Keuerleber attention had become. The VfR had specially prepared for this game in a three-day training camp near the Stuttgart venue , for which the mostly professional footballers had to take vacation. With this, coach Schmidt wanted to seal off his protégés from the euphoria that had spread from success to success in Mannheim. On the final weekend itself, a state of emergency prevailed between the Rhine and Neckar: an endless caravan of motorcycles, buses, trucks and occasionally also cars pulled over the autobahn, and the Reichsbahn provided 25 special trains from Mannheim alone. Stuttgart's US city commander Hoover had suspended the curfew for shops and restaurants as well as the food card requirement for these two days ; the stadium restaurant, which was only being rebuilt, offered food bags for 3 DM (contents: two lemonades, an egg, a roll, waffles, lollipops and chewing gum) and the rare " American cigarettes " were sold in large quantities on the streets .

On a scorchingly hot Sunday in July - the game went down in the annals as the “Stuttgart Heat Battle” - VfR was able to equalize the Dortmund leadership twice, so that the approximately 92,000 spectators in the overcrowded Neckarstadion (89,420 tickets had officially been sold) for their entrance fee received a 30 minute addition. De la Vigne also directed this enormously exhausting game when, over here and over there, many a player was more and more frequenting the buckets of water next to the sideline: “Because of his skillful game, he keeps attracting two or three Borussia players and is very fast on the ball and in understanding the situation. Schanko appears everywhere, switching from left to right in order to keep de la Vigne, the whirlwind in the Mannheim storm, under all circumstances. He's not very lucky in the shot on goal, but he tirelessly feeds his striker colleagues with assists and cross passes. ”  - and one of them extended Bolleyer to Löttke, who scored the decisive 3-2 volley in the 108th minute, so that the Kurpfälzer then also had to carry the oversized wreath through the glow of the sun on several laps of honor.

The city of Mannheim prepared a triumphant reception for the kickers on their return, in which players, coaches and supervisors were driven in open cars through the bombed ruins of the city center to their stadium, the sports field at the breweries ; the roadsides were black with applauding people. The photos of this car parade illustrate the importance that football represented for many Germans in the post-war years as an opportunity to distract themselves for a few hours from the difficult everyday life of the reconstruction period. The VfR rewarded its final heroes with a bonus of 650 DM each. Of the "Canadians", in addition to "Bella" and Langlotz, goalkeeper Hermann Jöckel , defender Philipp Henninger and outside runner Jakob Müller were in the championship team.

As "Czech Adamowski" at Racing Strasbourg

In the 1949/50 season, VfR Mannheim again qualified for the final round of the German championship, and de la Vigne again played a major role in this not only because of his 16 goals (4th place on the list of goalscorers), although he was from the South German football committee for four weeks had been banned - because of "game play": as a contract player he was officially allowed to earn a maximum of 320 D-Marks gross, but when the Mannheim ex- France professional Oskar Rohr offered him to play as a guest footballer at Racing Strasbourg for a considerable amount , He set out on the then arduous journey across several borders - from the American zone of occupation through the French to the Saarland and from there to France. At the beginning of November 1949 he played in a friendship meeting at the Stade de la Meinau as the "Czech guest player Adamowski" for the Alsatians against Lokomotiv Zagreb. The story was caught - Rudolf de la Vigne, the German champion, was already too well known for that - and besides being suspended, he also paid for the excursion with a fine of 20 marks. His club then brokered a small loan for him, with which he could buy a tobacco shop with lottery and laundry acceptance in Q 1 , the best downtown Mannheim location, and where you could meet him in person for the next three and a half decades, if he wasn't interested in football was on the way. As a result, this additional economic security prevented de la Vigne from having any plans to emigrate, even if “a fortune could not be made by playing football in the 1940s and 1950s. But we were respected everywhere in Mannheim, also role models for the youth ” .

It is difficult to clarify whether this escapade may have cost him appointments to the national team of the DFB ; when they played their first post-war international match in November 1950, he was almost 30 and the position of game designer with national coach Herberger was already permanently assigned to Fritz Walter . On the other hand, "Bella" was one of five wingers - the others were Blessing from VfB Stuttgart , "Fiffi" ​​Gerritzen ( VfB Oldenburg ), Berni Klodt ( STV Horst-Emscher ) and Herbert Erdmann, Dortmund's two-time goalscorer in the 1949 final 30 players whom the "Bundessepp" had called a few days before de la Vignes excursion to Alsace for a viewing course and from whom he intended to form a new national team. In this respect, it remains questionable whether de la Vigne's later assumption that the national coach did not like him personally is more than just a subjective impression.

1949/50: Participation in the final round again

In the final round of the German championship in the summer of 1950, the VfR met, although only fourth in the table - four teams each from the upper leagues West and South qualified this year - first in Gladbeck against the final opponent of the previous year; Thanks to two goals from de la Vigne, the win over Dortmund Borussia (3-1) was a little easier this time. In the intermediate round game played in Frankfurt, however, the goalkeeper of the opposing Prussians Dellbrück , the later national goalkeeper Fritz Herkenrath , repeatedly brought the defending champion's striker to despair, only allowed the connection goal to make it 1: 2 and thus prevented four southern German league clubs from making the cake in the semi-finals distributed alone among themselves. De la Vigne also had an opponent in Hermann Drost , who even followed him to the coaching bench during the game, where the Mannheimer wanted to get some refreshment with a wet sponge.

The 1950s

In the 1950s, the Mannheimers could not repeat these successes - there was no better than a third place in the league in the 1955/56 season - and also Rudolf de la Vigne, who was also active in the table tennis department of the VfR at this time , didn't score quite as many goals as in his early years; new storm colleagues like Werner Baßler and Ernst-Otto Meyer were responsible for this. In the summer of 1959, at the age of almost 39, de la Vigne ended his career. In the 12+ years at VfR Mannheim he has played a total of 317 league games and scored 121 goals. These numbers make him the record player and the second best shooter in his Mannheim team in their league days; He is also ranked 16th after missions and ranked 9th after hits of all footballers who have ever played in the Oberliga Süd.

De la Vigne, who by the way was very superstitious - only when his VfR arrived at the stadium before the opposing team was he confident that the game could be won, and he drove his teammates downright crazy with this quirk, as he did in a later one Interview known -, also played a few selection games that still attracted large audiences at that time. For example, on May 18, 1949, five days before the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, he stormed for Baden in the state cup game against Pfalz-Rheinhessen; The associations of the Soviet occupation zone took part in this competition for the last time. And on November 11, 1950, he played for the South German selection against the Southwest. Eleven days later, at the national team's first international match after eight years of international abstinence, Richard Herrmann from FSV Frankfurt was another left winger for (West) Germany on the pitch.

Club stations as a player

• German Sports Club Böhmisch Leipa (as a youth)
• German Sports Club Haida (until 1938 or 1939, as a teenager)
  • (disputed) Warnsdorf football club (1938/39), then possibly also the National Socialist gymnastics community Warnsdorf (1939/40)
  • (disputed) Munster sports club (1946)
• Association for lawn sports Mannheim (1946 / 47–1959)

Life after the active time

De la Vigne, who belongs to the generation that had part of their youth stolen by National Socialism and the war, remained connected to football afterwards: for a few years he worked as a coach , including for SV Phönix Ludwigshafen in the Oberliga Südwest (1960–1962 ) and the Sportfreunde Dossenheim . In addition, he occasionally played with the traditional 1949 team and met regularly in the club restaurant with other members of the VfR “comradeship of the elderly”. In addition, he continued to run his tobacco shop in the “ squares ” until 1985 and then retired with his wife Margit in Dossenheim an der Bergstrasse . For many years he continued to pursue the path of his VfR, who never played first class again from 1963 onwards. At the end of January 2004, at the age of 83, after a long illness, he died as the last of the “Meistersturms” of 1949.

Web links

• Rudolf de la Vigne in the database of weltfussball.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Knieriem / Grüne, p. 57 - on the other hand Skrentny, p. 111.
2. ^ According to Klaus Querengässer: The German Football Championship. Part 1: 1903-1945 (= AGON Sportverlag statistics. Vol. 28). AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1997, ISBN 3-89609-106-9 , pp. 176-177, there was a de la Vigne (without first name) for Warnsdorf in these four games - but as a right defender, so the thesis of Skrentny (p. 111) - who personally conducted a long interview with de la Vigne - that it was more a brother of Rudolf, seems plausible.
3. ↑ For the political background to this assessment, see Beneš decrees and Odsun .
4. ↑ Information from Die deutsche Fußball-Oberliga 1946–1963, Volume 2: Südwest, Süd, Endrunden Sport- und Spielverlag 1989 ISBN 3-9802172-3-X ; It remains open, however, why "Bella" was honored on May 5, 1957 before the game against Karlsruher SC for 10 years in the league at VfR: a May date was actually closed because it would have been the last home game of the season early.
5. ↑ Skrentny, p. 110.
6. ↑ 100 years VfR Mannheim, p. 106.
7. ↑ 100 years VfR Mannheim, p. 117.
8. ↑ Skrentny, p. 107 f.
9. ↑ Original match report from 100 years of VfR Mannheim, p. 111.
10. ↑ One of these photos with de la Vigne and Langlotz can be found in Skrentny, p. 109.
11. ↑ Skrentny, p. 111.
12. ↑ According to Knieriem / Grüne, this excursion should only have been a trial training session; had that been the case, de la Vigne's punishment by the SFA would hardly be understandable.
13. ↑ 100 years VfR Mannheim, p. 118.
14. ↑ Knieriem / Voigt, p. 120, however, rightly point out that Herberger, "as has also shown in the following years, would have preferred the older players".
15. ↑ Mannheimer Morgen, October 29, 1949.
16. ↑ Skrentny, p. 111.
17. ^ Heinrich Peuckmann: More heroes from the football west. Stories - legends - anecdotes. Aschendorff, Münster 2003, ISBN 978-3-402-05463-5 , p. 34 f.
18. ↑ This station is only mentioned in Knieriem / Grüne.
19. ↑ Renaming of the WFK in the course of the National Socialist reorganization of the association (see DRL / NSRL )
20. ↑ Also not mentioned in Skrentny.
21. ^ Mannheimer Morgen, February 2, 2004.

literature

• 100 years of VfR Mannheim 1896–1996 (anniversary publication)
• Lorenz Knieriem / Hardy Grüne: Spiellexikon 1890–1963. AGON, Kassel o. J. (2006) ISBN 3-89784-148-7 .
• Lorenz Knieriem / Matthias Voigt: Football World Cup 1950 Brazil. AGON, Kassel 2003 ISBN 3-89784-217-3 (in it the chapter "What would a Federal German World Cup contingent have looked like?" , Pp. 119–120)
• Werner Skrentny: Canadians in the "heat battle". In: ders. (Ed.): When Morlock still met the moonlight. The history of the Oberliga Süd 1945–1963. Klartext, Essen 1993 ISBN 3-88474-055-5 (pp. 106–113)
• Gerhard Zeilinger: Triumph and decline in Mannheim's football sport 1945-1970. Football archive, Mannheim 1995 ISBN 3-929295-14-8 .

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 17, 2006 .