Germany Connector's Challenge November 2022: Football players

Question

Hi connectors,

finally the next monthly German connection challenge is on its way. I waited for a profile to be opened, but decided eventually not to include that one in this month's challenge.

As this month starts the Football World Championship, this month's topic are German football players. All of them belong to the German Greatest and/or most popular players.

Uwe Seeler was in the World Cup final that England won.

Fritz Walter was the captain of the team that won the World Cup in 1954. (Connected! Thanks Flo!)

Franz Beckenbauer is considered the Greatest German player of all time.

Heidi Mohr won several European Championships and is considered the best striker of her era.

Comments

Fritz Walter will be connected tomorrow. Bonus challenge: Connect the 40+ profiles around https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Walter-2690 as well, since he seems to be so close.

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Thanks to Walther-980 this is now also done.

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Well done Flo! Thanks for that

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thanks ... and for Connect-A-Thon might be also something, because some of his grandchildren went to Tscherwenka in Batschka

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Crvenka (saying it in Serbian now), it is on the route by car when you go from the triangle Hungary/Serbia/Croatia to Belgrade. It's known for the sugar fabric there.

Answer 1

That's funny. I worked at Beckenbauers grandpa some months ago. There is still the baptism record that one can process and I guess the previous church books are also online.

Comments

They seem to have come from Walting for multiple generations. Unfortunately, after cleaning up, we have no connected profiles from there anymore.

Only chances would be Beer-1806 from neighboring village of Gungolding or https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L8PD-YZ5 from neighboring village Pfalzpaint

Answer 2

Fritz Walters father Ludwig was from Niederkirchen (Westpfalz) and lived in the US for some years. The mother is Dorothea Kieburg from Berlin-Wannsee (maybe on ancestry?):
https://www.m-vg.de/mediafiles/Leseprobe/9783742314444.pdf

The mother was born 1896 in Berlin:
https://www.initiative-fritz-walter-museum.de/erinnerungen/2021/007-dorothea-walter/

Comments

Fritz now has a mother. Search results imply that https://www.ancestry.de/family-tree/person/tree/173456308/person/142254595079/facts contains her father's family tree.

I'm still bugged by Fritz living at relatives (sic!) in the US before World War I. Maybe that would be our path of connection.

His was was from Belluno, Italy, according to English Wikipedia. She is dead for more than 20 years meanwhile: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/132645613/italia-walter

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Ha! There he is: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C9T3-PDMH-5?i=710&cc=1368704&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AJJXL-NWT

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I have it figured out, consider him connected :)

Answer 3

That's a wonderful challenge and there are so many more names that come to my. Not to forget Thomas Strunz, former National Player and was actually living in the same street and we went to the same school, I was just one level above him. We even went to Youth holiday in France together, shared a tent. Brings back good memories.

I think at the minimum it would be worth to include every single player that won the World Championship in Football.

So that's 4 men teams and 2 women teams to start off with.

Please do not forget Helmut Rahn who scored the winning goal in 1954 in Bern, Switzerland. Here's a video of it, how Germany came back after being down 0:2 against the all mighty (at that time) Hungarian National team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB9t9DQyEZo (in German but you will get the vibe).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_national_football_team

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_women%27s_national_football_team

Comments

Creating profiles for all World Champions and connecting them could be a particular "project". For this challenge I took over the year profiles that were already created. The only one I created new was Heidi Mohr today. Except her, all profiles I used this year were already in the database, which has been my goal. I wanted to increase the connections of Notables and not so Notables, simply that the Germany Project has more possibilities to get profiles in the list for the Example Profiles of the Week.

Another point is that I only use four or five profiles a month, because otherwise it could be too intense otherwise. They still have a life beside WikiTree. ;)

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Sorry Jelena, I don't get your answer. Does it mean those people mentioned:

a) aren't in your current group

b) shouldn't be in this group

c) should be added to your work

? A lot of basic information (birth date and location, in some cases death dates) are available in Wikipedia and probably some more football related databases (have to check on this one as even though I'm German I'm not crazy about football). So the starting point can be added quickly, the challenge will be the parents and grandparents as that will be in specific (sometimes paid) databases or in the archives (where the copies of the "Standesamt" are kept).

If you ask some crazy German football fans, than these people are indeed not notables, they are Gods to them (no joking).

BTW, along the castle/hotel where the 1954 German National team stayed are wooden figures (along the lake there) with the Coach, Rahn, Fritz Walter and I think one other that I saw this year whilst jogging there on a recent Switzerland trip.

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Generally said: There were in most months more people in the database that I could have added into the challenge than I did. I have to make a choice.

If you want to create profiles for the World Champs, go ahead. There's nothing stopping you.

And there's no need to ask "crazy football fans" anywhere, I am a crazy football fan myself, going now into my 11th World Champs I am following on TV. ;) I know who we are talking about.

Answer 4

Ernie Stautner

Ernie Stautner was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 1969. Stautner was also an inaugural member of the Steelers Hall of Honor as a member of the Class of 2017.

Stautner, who was born in Germany, died in 2006 at age 80.

Stautner was the first player ever to have his number retired by the Pittsburgh Steelers, and it was well earned as he was the first of their Hall of Famers to play his entire career with the team. The team's second-round draft pick in 1950, Stautner's No. 70 was retired in 1964, a deserving honor for a legend.

Stautner won the NFL's Best Lineman Award in 1957 and he earned All-NFL honors nine times, despite being considered undersized. He missed just six games during his 14-year career, never letting numerous injuries slow him down.

Stautner, who was named to nine Pro Bowls, chose Art Rooney Sr. to be his presenter at the Hall of Fame.

Comments

Do you speak of American Football or the sport Americans call soccer? When Germans speak of "Football" they mean soccer. The players I put into this challenge are soccer players - fitting to the "theme" Soccer World Championships that is starting in a few days.

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Ernie Stautner is an American football player. Not a soccer player.

Answer 5

Hi Jelena,

I came across this old post when I was looking at English female football players. There's a category for football players https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Association_Football_Players - it's very UK dominated at present, and am not quite sure how a category gets added, but it feels like it's missing one for Germany.

I was particularly excited that you had included a woman as at present there are no women in the list (although getting Leah Williamson added). It might also help with getting profile boosts for German notables.

What I'm hoping is to get enough female football players up there before the Euros next year to give them a real push.

Comments

I would have been happy if there had been more German football players at all, no matter if male or female. I had to look for quite a while to find four profiles at all. In fact I created the profile for Heidi Mohr to include her in the challenge.

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Do you know how to get German categories added? I only know about England ones. But creating a category can create some additional push?

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Before I create a category for German football players, I'd like to have a consistent naming pattern in the category. "England Footballers" could be a parent for "England, International Football players" (Do you name it Footballers or Football players? That's also an inconsistency.) The Footballers as parent would be able to contain players that were "only" League players.

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What I know is that England, Footballers is an occupation - for those who play or played football for a living. Whereas the international category is for those who played for their national team. So players might be in both. Beyond that i think it's a wider question than I might be able to advise on. I'm really only keeping track so I can spot female players from amongst them - there were none until I started down this track.

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Just to let you know a fact about women's football in Germany. From 1955 until 1970, official women's teams were forbidden in Germany. Only after that, leagues were created.

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Same in the UK, but for an even longer period. The FA were concerned that the women's teams were drawing too large crowds.....

I've been working on some players from before the effective ban in 1921 when they were just as famous if not more so than the men. But it does make it harder that we are missing that middle period of time.