Wolfgang Klank

Wolfgang Klank (born July 31, 1930 in Dessau ; † June 1998 ) was a German football player . He was the first goalkeeper of the GDR national soccer team.

Wolfgang Klank belonged to the first generation of football in the GDR. He started playing football in the youth teams of SV Dessau 05 during the Second World War from 1939 to 1944 . Between January and November 1949 he spent almost a year with the north-west German Eintracht Nordhorn , but then went back to Dessau . The newly founded GDR league had just started playing with the company sports association (BSG) Waggonbau Dessau, later Motor Dessau. The team, the successor to SV 05, had just become the first GDR Cup winner , and Klank replaced the previous goalkeeper Fritz Doebler , who moved to Tasmania Berlin in 1950 . With Klank, Dessau experienced their most successful time in GDR football and was able to hold onto the top GDR league until 1954 .

Despite a height of 1.79 m and a body weight of 72 kg, Klank's good goalkeeping performances had a large part in Dessau's good performance, and they earned him appearances in the first three international matches of the GDR national team between 1952 and 1953 . His international career ended abruptly when he participated in the game boycott of the Dessau players against the tough training methods of the new coach Walter Fritzsch during the 1953/54 season and a six-month suspension was then imposed on him. This prompted Klank, who had played 135 league games in Dessau, to illegally leave the GDR in 1954 and join the Hessian team Kickers Offenbach . Due to the illegal move to the Federal Republic of Germany, Wolfgang Klank was also banned in Offenbach and did not play a game in the Oberliga Süd for Hessen.

In April 1955, after his suspension in the GDR had expired, Klank went back there. At that time, western refugees willing to return were still unpunished. However, Klank had to "prove" for a few months at the third-rate BSG Rotation Südwest Leipzig before he could switch to the Leipzig league club Sportclub Rotation for the 1956 season . He replaced Walter Vogelsang there, who had ended his active career. Klank guarded the Leipzig goal in 99 league games until the end of the 1961/62 season. During his time in Leipzig, he came again to an international match in the B national team.

At the age of 32, Klank returned to Motor Dessau. There he was able to celebrate with his team in the 1962/63 season the promotion to the second-rate GDR league and ended his competitive sports career at Motor Dessau in 1965.

Klanks A internationals
09/21/1952	Poland - GDR	3-0
10/26/1952	Romania - GDR	3: 1
06/14/1953	GDR - Bulgaria	0-0

literature

• Hardy Grüne , Lorenz Knieriem: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 8: Player Lexicon 1890–1963. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 , p. 192.
• Hanns Leske : Encyclopedia of GDR football . Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89533-556-3 , p. 254.
• Hanns Leske: The GDR league players. A lexicon. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2014, ISBN 978-3-89784-392-9 , p. 235.
• Hanns Leske: Magnets for leather balls. Goalkeeper of the GDR. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2014, ISBN 978-3-89784-368-4 , p. 118.

Web links

• Wolfgang Klank in the database of weltfussball.de
• Wolfgang Klank in the database of fussballdaten.de
• Wolfgang Klank in the database of National-Football-Teams.com (English)