Walter Schoeller

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Walter Schoeller (born May 12, 1889 in Zurich ; † May 16, 1979 in Brunnen ) was a Swiss athlete and sports official and company director of the Schoeller Switzerland cloth and worsted yarn factories .

Life

Hardturm, residential and commercial building of the Schoeller family
Logo Grasshopper Club Zurich

Walter Schoeller comes from the line of the Rhenish entrepreneur family Schoeller , who moved to Switzerland in 1867 to open up new markets there. It was Walter's grandfather, Rudolf Wilhelm Schoeller (1827–1902), son of the Düren entrepreneur Leopold Schoeller , who had relocated the family-owned Schoeller's worsted yarn spinning mill from Breslau to Switzerland and new ones in Schaffhausen , Derendingen and on the area at the Hardturm in Zurich Established factories. Caesar Schoeller (1853–1918), son of Rudolf Wilhelm and father of Walter, added a cloth dye factory to the portfolio at the Hardturm, which he acquired from 1882 at the same time as a living and meeting room. Ultimately, it was Caesar Schoeller who organized the Grasshopper Club Zürich GCZ football club, newly founded in 1886, the appropriate area for a stadium to be built at Hardturmstrasse 321.

In this entrepreneurial and sporting environment, Walter Schoeller developed an inclination for competitive sports even in his youth. He joined the Grasshoppers early on and initially had a successful career as a rower . In addition to two national titles, he was together with Hans Walter , Max Rudolf , Paul Schmid and Charles Muhr as helmsman in 1912 in Geneva and in 1913 in Ghent European champion in the four-man with helmsman . In the eighth position he won the European Championship in 1912 and in 1911 in Como and in 1913 the Vice European Championship.

He then devoted himself to tennis , where he achieved the title of Swiss individual champion in 1918 and 1922 and that of international Swiss champion in men's and mixed doubles in 1918. But even this was not enough for the versatile athlete. In addition to his activities in rowing and tennis, he was a member of the football department at a very early age and was the middle runner in the team that won the national championships in 1921.

After the Landhockey section at the GCZ was founded in 1924 , Schoeller also took a liking to this sport and, despite his advanced age for an athlete, he won the state championships in 1926 and 1927.

Walter Schoeller, who in the meantime had successfully completed his apprenticeship as a company manager and, together with his cousin Arthur Friedrich Schoeller (1881–1953), was promoted to the management of the various Swiss family businesses trading under Schoeller Switzerland , jumped at "his" Grasshopper Club in 1934, when the club got into financial difficulties after a devastating stadium fire. Schoeller acquired the stadium and made it available to the GCZ for free use for 45 years, thus enabling the club to bear both the reconstruction of the stadium and the other running costs.

In the same year Schoeller, who was already president of the football section from 1910 to 1913 and in 1915, was elected central president of the club, an honorary position which he held until 1976. The club then made him honorary president on March 31, 1976 . Walter Schoeller, who was only called "Mister GC" in his circle of friends, was still active in sport well into old age and, as in the past, exercised his various offices with the utmost discipline and conscientiousness. In his honor, the Schoeller Cup was initiated at the end of the sixties , which has developed into the largest indoor tennis tournament for senior citizens in Switzerland.

After Walter Schoeller had become the sole owner of the textile and wool yarn empire in 1953 after the death of his business partner Arthur Friedrich Schoeller, also a grandson of Rudolf Wilhelm Schoeller, in the sixties he put his company in the hands of the Albers family of entrepreneurs, who were related by marriage and friends who then continued this as Albers & Co. Schoeller also introduced his personal friend and foster son Uli Albers into the management of the Grasshoppers Club and then stipulated in his will that the Hardturm area and the Hardturm Stadium should become the property of the Albers Group after his death in 1979. After 1997, Credit Suisse initially acquired a minority stake of 40% in the stadium and has been the sole owner since 2002. The former Schoeller site, on which the Limmatwest residential and service development was built after the factory building was demolished between 1997 and 2002 , including the landmarked tower, still belongs to the Albers Group through Hardturm AG.

Web links

Commons : Hardturm  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Arthur Schoeller in the Dodis database of diplomatic documents in Switzerland
  2. Limmatwest on the website of the city of Zurich
  3. Limmatwest - building history and owner of the Hardturm