Wolfgang Wittemaier

Wolfgang Wittemaier (born January 23, 1934 ) is a former German soccer player who played 117 games in the Oberliga Südwest from 1959 to 1963 at TuRa Ludwigshafen and scored 64 goals.

career

Amateur, until 1959

In the Mannheim district of Feudenheim , at the ASV soccer club there , the young amateur soccer player Wolfgang Wittemaier celebrated considerable successes between 1953 and 1959. After being promoted to the 1st amateur league in North Baden in 1953 , the ASV won the runner-up in their debut year 1954/55 and thus took part in the games for the German amateur championship in 1955. The players from Feudenheim came in the years 1957 to 1959 with center forward Wittemaier twice in third and 1958 in second place. Since the talented scorer also distinguished himself in the association selection of North Baden in the regional cup - he was one of the scorers in the 3-2 win on September 14, 1957 in Bamberg against the favored Bavaria - he was also awarded for the German national soccer team in 1958 Amateurs nominated. In the international match on May 4, 1958 in Le Mans against France, the Feudenheimer stormed the right winger in the DFB amateur selection. The inner storm was formed by Peter Grosser , Klaus Matischak and the second debutante from North Baden, Horst Kunzmann . Although the goal scorer from Feudenheim remained with this appointment in the amateur national team, he had further international assignments with the association selection of North Baden in 1959 through the games against a B-team from Luxembourg, the Alsace selection and the regional representative of Tyrol in Innsbruck. At the age of 25, he accepted the offer from TuRa Ludwigshafen from the Oberliga Südwest in 1959/60 and became a contract player.

Oberliga and Regionalliga Südwest, 1959 to 1966

The attacker, who moved from the Neckar to the Rhine, became in his four rounds - 1959/60 to 1962/63 - with his 64 goals for TuRa Ludwigshafen, the most successful goal scorer of the 1882 Ludwigshafen gymnastics and lawn sports club in their eleven-year league membership in the southwest. The ex-amateur soccer player from Feudenheim increased his hit rate from round to round. When he scored 18 goals in 1962, Helmut Kapitulski and Elmar May had 19 goals each in the southwest league. In the last year of the major leagues, 1962/63, Wittemaier scored 19 goals and thus scored one more goal than Harald Braner and Johannes Löhr . With his teammates Karlheinz Sturm (goal), Hans Dörrzapf (defender), Siegfried Mätze, Jürgen Aßmus, Horst Kunzmann (runner row; the left runner was not, however, the 20-time amateur national player from Birkenfeld, as it was erroneously stated in the Green players' dictionary from 2006 can be read), Ernst Gutermann (half-left) and left winger Heinz Lieb, he formed the core of the TuRa-Elf, which ended the league era in 1963 with eighth place. He moved to Wormatia Worms in the new Southwest Regional Football League for the 1963/64 season .

At Wormatia, coach Radoslav Momirski used the striker alternately as a right winger and a center forward. Worms fought an exciting three-way battle for the championship with Neunkirchen and Pirmasens. In the end, the Borussia and the FKP prevailed with two and one point respectively over Worms. Wittemaier had 23 hits in his first round in the Nibelungenstadt. In both matches against his previous club - TuRa Ludwigshafen - Worms prevailed with goals from Wittemaier. In the following round - 1964/65 - Worms won the runner-up behind the Bundesliga relegated and new champions, 1. FC Saarbrücken , and thus moved into the promotion round to the Bundesliga in 1965. The 31-year-old was used in all six games. In the first four encounters against Borussia Mönchengladbach , SSV Reutlingen 05 and Holstein Kiel , he stormed alongside the attackers Lothar Buchmann and Dieter Needürftig as a center forward, before stabilizing the defense in the two final games against Reutlingen and Mönchengladbach as a center runner. The 1-1 draw on June 26, 1965 on the Bökelberg in Mönchengladbach in front of 35,000 enthusiastic spectators from the Lower Rhine was remarkable . The team of coach Hennes Weisweiler struggled against the excellent Worms defense against goalkeeper Slavko Stojanovic and center runner Wittemaier despite the strikers Herbert L Genealogie , Jupp Heynckes , Bernd Rupp , Günter Netzer and Werner Waddey . After 92 appearances in the Regionalliga Südwest and 41 goals for Wormatia Worms from 1963 to 1966, the 32-year-old returned to his home club ASV Feudenheim in the 1st Amateur League North Baden for the 1966/67 round.

In 1967 he immediately celebrated the championship in front of the amateurs of the Karlsruher SC and the SV Sandhausen in the amateur camp and thus moved into the promotion round to the Regionalliga Süd. In the end there was one point missing from the promoted TSG Backnang , but it was still a worthy end to a long football career at a high level.

literature

• Gerhard Zeilinger, Triumph and decline in Mannheim football, 1945 - 1970 , Football Archive Mannheim, 1995, ISBN 3-929295-14-8 .
• Werner Skrentny (Ed.): The fear of the devil in front of the pea mountain. The history of the Oberliga Südwest 1946–1963. Klartext, Essen 1996, ISBN 3-88474-394-5 .
• Ulrich Homann (Hrsg.): Hellfire on Ascension. The history of the promotion rounds to the Bundesliga 1963–1974. Klartext, Essen 1990, ISBN 3-88474-346-5 .
• Hardy Greens : Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 2: Bundesliga & Co. 1963 to today. 1st division, 2nd division, GDR Oberliga. Numbers, pictures, stories. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1997, ISBN 3-89609-113-1 .