Union Club

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The Union-Klub was a horse racing organization based in Berlin from 1867 to 1945 , which, like the English Jockey Club, consistently organized the previously fragmented landscape of horse races in Germany. The aristocratic club played a major role in the social life of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic . After 1945 the club was rebuilt in West Germany .

history

The Union-Klub was founded on December 15, 1867 in Berlin in the Hotel de Rome on Unter den Linden boulevard by a group of 36 leading representatives of equestrian sports from different parts of Germany. The background to the founding of the club was the endeavor to create a body that would organize and systematize the operation of equestrian sport, especially racing and horse breeding, in the various German states in a uniform manner. The name of the new club was intended to express the will of the new association to develop its activities in all areas of Germany, which was not yet unified by the state at the time, and to bring about a close cohesion of all interested parties and to accommodate the then around 50 racing clubs and racing courses to join together under a common roof.

The idea of ​​founding the club went back to the sports journalist Fedor André , publisher of the specialist journal Der Sporn . Hugo zu Hohenlohe-Öhringen , Duke zu Ujest, then head of the Hohenlohe family and a member of the Prussian mansion, was elected as the first club president . One of the first members of the club was the then Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck , whose political comrades in arms included most of the club members. In addition to numerous representatives of the aristocratic upper class, which formed the tribe of the club from the imperial era until 1945, most of the foreign ambassadors and envoys accredited in Berlin were always members. The latter circumstance was probably the reason why the club even after the coming to power of the Nazis largely untouched allowed to continue.

One of the main efforts of the club was to make the breeding of thoroughbred horses on a mandatory basis, based on the British model, and the calculation rules for horse racing bets, better known under the provisions of the Berlin Union Club .

Characteristic for the organizational structure and the habitus of the club was its exclusive cut: Membership was reserved for representatives of the social (and financial) upper class, with high membership fees ensuring, among other things, that one remained “to oneself”. Women were also generally not allowed. From this it emerged that the club was often criticized as a corporate union of the " Junkers ", as a monarchist institution and reactionary secret society.

The premises of the Union Club were set up in a representative way for a distinguished and elegant company with a feudal ambience: Club members could not only have meals in them at any time, but elegant dinners and receptions were also regularly held in them . Following the example of English clubs, they had an excellent kitchen and an exquisite wine cellar.

After the Second World War , the club was reopened as a race organizer in West Germany . In 2005, he filed for bankruptcy as the organizer of the races at the Hoppegarten horse racing track .

Succession organization

The executive body of the Union Club was the so-called 'Supreme Authority'. After the Second World War, the Directorate for Thoroughbred Breeding and Races , based in Cologne-Weidenpesch, was founded in 1947 as the successor organization to the Supreme Authority .

Known club members

President of the club

literature

  • Hermann Pfaender: Fifty years of the Union-Klub: Sports-historical memories for the anniversary of the “Union-Klub” 1867–1917 , 1917.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Finished. Union-Klub filed for bankruptcy: Hoppegarten is finally broke. In: Berliner Kurier , August 4, 2005