Leipzig abbreviation with a worldwide reputation (neue-deutschland.de)

There will be plenty of discussion material between nostalgia and current concerns about the coaching profession in German competitive sport this Thursday in the Leipzig Ratskeller. Since the beginning of the new millennium, former professors, scientists and employees have met every year on October 22nd in the bar in the New Town Hall to commemorate the founding of the German University for Physical Culture and Sport (DHfK), where they taught, researched, worked and studied. This time the group of alumni is celebrating the 70th birthday of the university – and at the same time will commemorate its end 30 years ago, which was sealed by the Saxon state government under CDU Prime Minister Kurt Biedenkopf. “There is no great official part”, Karsten Schumann outlines the framework of the event. “It’s more of a private get-together to exchange ideas and remember times together.”

From DHfK to DFB and FC Bayern

The 57-year-old, one of the last DHfK graduates and co-author of a chronicle about the university, has mixed feelings about it. In retrospect, he is grateful for a first-class education. “It was a world-renowned institution, this diploma was a seal of quality,” reports Schumann, who after the fall of the Wall worked for Matthias Sammer for more than ten years in his functions as sports director of the German Football Association (DFB) and sports director FC Bayern Munich was active. Today Karsten Schumann works as a freelance lecturer, including a professorship at a private university.

For the international impact of the DHfK alone, around 2000 participants from 90 nations take part in the courses under the heading of “Olympic solidarity”, who have been trained there to become specialists in the field of sport. Nationally, the DHfK was regarded as a university with a “universal concept” that trained world champions and Olympic champions, even in the smallest sports and disciplines: trainers and officials for all levels as well as specialists for all subject areas of GDR sports, even up to Segments of leisure and recreational sports.

Notorious unit FKS

When the institution was founded in 1950, ten teachers taught a total of 96 students, and in September 1953 the first 296 distance students were added. Seven years later there were already 2515 students, almost half of them in distance learning. There were seven branch offices – in Rostock, Berlin, Magdeburg, Cottbus, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Erfurt as well as six consultation centers in Schwerin, Potsdam, Neubrandenburg, Frankfurt (Oder), Oberhof and Jena. Also the Research Institute for Physical Culture and Sport (FKS), which has been developed from the DHfK since the late 1960s as a result of the concentration on competitive sport and then worked as an independent, well-sealed, secret and also notorious unit. There was also intensive work on doping substances and methods. The first students enrolled at the Institute for Physical Education at the Humboldt University in Berlin after the Second World War certainly did not think of such a complex development when they set the ball rolling for the Leipzig Sports University in February 1949.

Unique competitive sports concept

With a view to the present and future of all-German competitive sport, Karsten Schumann assesses the DHfK-Aus rather soberly. The sports scientist with a doctorate is neither inspired by the status of “aD” at his former university, which might at some point be switched back from “out of service” to “active on the net”, nor does he consider such a scenario to be contemporary or sensible. »The DHfK as an institution was embedded in a historically unique competitive sport concept. In addition, this name is inextricably linked with a comprehensive interdisciplinary concept. Without this, a new establishment would damage the name under different social framework conditions. «DHfK graduate Lutz Nordmann does not believe in a renaissance of this former East German institution. The 63-year-old is now director of the coaching academy of the German Olympic Sports Association in Cologne. Most recently, before the fall of the Berlin University of Applied Sciences, almost 400 direct and distance learning students were enrolled per year, says Nordmann and asks: “Where do we want to go today with so many graduates?” He gives the answer himself: “For that such a university would be completely oversized today. The conditions in top-class sport today cannot be compared with back then. “

As a former sports director of the German Hockey Association, Nordmann is well aware of the value of high-class coaching training. Especially now, when the most important partners of the athletes are facing enormous upheavals and a generation change. The important topic of coaches, their training, recruitment and social security can be described as a “major construction site” in today’s top-class German sport. In Saxony, for example, currently more than a quarter of the 161 state-financed trainers are older than 55 years. In the entire German sports system, almost half of the nearly 3,500 federal and state trainers financed by the federal government, the federal states or the Bundeswehr are over 50 years old. According to Nordmann, an average of 120 coaches would have to be replaced every year in order to cope with the age transition.

But where do you get so much and urgently needed specialist staff from? “To do this, organized sport would have to invite technical colleges or universities, for example, or also increasingly involve regional partners. It’s a difficult, rocky process, ”emphasizes Nordmann. His trainer academy in Cologne with only 30 graduates per year cannot possibly achieve this, it is more than a size too small for the needs of competitive sports practice. The DHfK, according to its earlier dimensions, would in turn be clearly under-challenged with this need and a few sizes too big. “A structure somewhere in between might make sense,” says Karsten Schumann. “But please not under the abbreviation DHfK.”

The name lives on in great diversity

The once world-famous abbreviation lives on in the sports club DHfK Leipzig eV, which saw the light of day on September 20, 1954. With almost 6500 members, it is currently number four among the 4453 sports clubs in the Free State of Saxony. The SC DHfK unites 18 departments under one roof – including the Bundesliga handball players, who have been developing excellently for years and who were able to consolidate their top position in the table with a home win against Göppingen this Thursday. But children’s sports, fitness and health are also very important. And with branches such as floorball, fin swimming, inline skating or synchronized swimming, the club continues to promote sport in all its diversity – following the example of the university that opened in 1950 and closed in 1990.