Waldemar Tietgens

Waldemar Tietgens (born March 26, 1879 in Hamburg ; † July 28, 1917 in Langemark-Poelkapelle , Flanders ) was a German rower who became the first German Olympic champion in rowing in 1900 with the four-man helmsman .

Career

At the Olympic Games in 1900 , the first Olympic rowing competitions were held on the Seine in Paris. The Hamburg and Germania Ruder Club had sent the crew to Paris for an eight . Some rowers from this eighth, namely Oskar Goßler , his brother Gustav Goßler as well as Walther Katzenstein and Waldemar Tietgens also competed in the four with a helmsman. In the heats on August 25th, the eighth qualified for the final as third of his heat and the four with helmsman as first of his heat. The final in the eighth took place on August 26th. For the final, the Hamburg team had replaced their helmsman Alexander Gleichman von Oven with a younger and 45 pound lighter French helmsman, but could not deal with the different weight distribution in the boat and took fourth place.

In the foursome with helmsman there were protests against the qualification, which should be corrected on August 26th in an elimination race. Not all participants had been informed about this, so some boats were missing, including the four from Germania Hamburg. The decision was then made to count the result of the elimination race as the official final result and to organize another official final on August 27th for the three boats that had missed this race. This compromise means that there will be two official finals for the 1900 Olympic Games with official Olympic champions, Olympic champions and Olympic thirds.

In addition to the Hamburg boat, teams from Minerva Amsterdam and the Ludwigshafen rowing club competed in the second final on August 27th . The Hamburg team appointed another brother of Oskar and Gustav Goßler, 15-year-old Carl Goßler , as helmsman . The Hamburg team won the race by more than a boat length over the Amsterdam team, who in turn reached the finish just ahead of the Ludwigshafen team. The Hamburg victory was not only the first ever Olympic victory for German rowers, but also the first ever victory for a German boat in a major regatta abroad.

The merchant Waldemar Tietgens was killed in Flanders in 1917.

literature

• Volker Kluge : Summer Olympic Games. The Chronicle I. Athens 1896 - Berlin 1936. Sportverlag Berlin, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-328-00715-6 .
• Karl Lennartz , Walter Teutenberg: II. Olympic Games 1900 in Paris. Presentation and sources. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1995, ISBN 3-928562-20-7 .

Web links

• Waldemar Tietgens in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volker Kluge, page 112, note 214
2. ↑ Volker Kluge, page 111f, note 201
3. ↑ Lennartz and Teutenberg, page 103
4. ↑ Volker Kluge, page 112, note 205