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Only the reporter was knocked out (nd current)

Wolfgang Behrendt

Photo: nd / Ulli Winkler

When Wolfgang Behrendt is asked about his greatest sporting triumph 65 years ago, the Olympic victory on December 1, 1956 in front of 8,000 spectators in the West Melbourne Stadium, he usually fends off: “Oh, that’s yesterday’s news,” he says and laughs . The then 20-year-old real Berlin boy, born in Wedding, grew up in Weißensee, surprised many in the then all-German team with his 2-1 point victory in the bantamweight final against the South Korean song Soon Chon – the entire boxing world still to. As the first Olympic champion in the still young GDR, he rose to become a folk hero and ultimately became a legend. He frankly admits that a bruise in his calf made him unable to fully understand his victory at first. “But it was the nicest thing I could achieve.”

The GDR reporter legend, the now 93-year-old Heinz Florian Oertel, describes Behrendt’s triumph in retrospect as follows: »I was crouching at the ring, 8,000 spectators were excited. When describing the final, I couldn’t understand my own word. Again and again I hummed myself: stay calm, speak slowly, so that something arrives at home at all. Then, in the third round, the horses went through me. ”But the worst thing that can happen to a reporter, Oertel learned later: No reception of his report at home. The decisive third lap was lost on the long aetherwave route. Wolfgang Behrendt, a cheerful person through and through, always full of wit and humor, flatters Oertel’s mishap even today: “That you knocked out, well …”

Behrendt is the only German sports star who has ever been congratulated by two presidents: Wilhelm Pieck (GDR) and Theodor Heuss (FRG). But he only remembers it with nostalgia. Heuss wanted to honor Behrendt with the “Silver Laurel Leaf” and had invited him to the award ceremony in Bonn. But when the Berliner had left his bag on the treadmill at the airport in Tempelhof in the not yet divided city, “suddenly someone came from behind and said: We don’t want you to fly there,” says Behrendt. He took his luggage and followed the Lord back to the east. To this day he has not received the “Silver Laurel Leaf”.

Behrendt’s sporting career began after the war, when he was eleven years old, in a private boxing school in Weißensee – against his mother’s wishes. He had to pay 25 marks a month for it, raised by his pocket money and by eagerly collecting empties. “Later I went to the Weißensee unit. Hans Borowski became my coach and fatherly friend. «At the Olympics in Melbourne, however, Erich Sonneberg was the coach of the entire team in his corner. “I owe a lot to both of them,” says Behrendt.

Four years after his victory, he missed the next games. He retired from sports and began studying photography. In the run-up to the 1964 Olympic Games, he allowed himself to be persuaded to return to the boxing ring, which he later described as “a mistake”. On the way to the comeback at the national elimination in 1964, he was confronted with unusual training methods. “In the winter training camp we went to the forests of Thuringia to help the forester cut down trees,” he describes the muscle building training at the time. With a broken left hand, he then lost against Wolfgang Schmitt from Mainz with 1: 2. With the proud record of 201 fights, only eight defeats, but not a single one by knockout, he finally said goodbye to the boxing ring.

The trained machinist then retrained to become a film cameraman and joined East German television. From 1963 on, he took photos for “Neues Deutschland”, took part in eight Olympic Games and also won awards with the camera. “I got two gold medals,” he says proudly, “one in Bangkok and one in China among 1,000 participants.” He also tells with obvious pleasure that as an ND sports photographer he was seeing Song again at the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul Soon Chon celebrated – his final opponent in Melbourne in 1956. “That was organized by the people in the press center, a great idea.”

In 1991 he was dismissed from the »ND«. The then 55-year-old dared to take the plunge into self-employment. “I risked it even though I had no idea how it worked. But I quickly managed to gain a foothold again. Of course, I benefited from my fame. Some pictures are still in demand today, ”says Behrendt, who also fulfills“ two or three autograph requests a day ”.

He no longer has a relationship with boxing. “Today it is actually only present through professional boxing. It had little to do with boxing in my day. This is a circus. The good amateur boxers are no worse than the professionals, tactically and technically even better. ”He adds with satisfaction that his son Mario was an amateur three times GDR boxing champion and Olympic participant in Moscow in 1980.

In the past few years, things have become quieter around Wolfgang Behrendt. After the death of his wife Monika in 2016, he often withdrew to his property on the outskirts of Berlin. So he will only celebrate his 85th birthday on Monday in close family circles. Perhaps the passionate hobby musician will pull out his trumpet again as he did before and delight his audience. With agencies

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