SC Hakoah Wien
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| Hakoah Wien | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Full name | Sport Club Hakoah Wien | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Founded | 1909 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sport Club Hakoah Wien or Hakoah Vienna is a Viennese athletic club which was the largest of its time in the early 20th century. It was well known for fielding an entirely Jewish football team with players drawn from throughout Europe.
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[edit] History
A pair of Austrian Zionists, cabaret librettist Fritz "Beda" Löhrner and dentist Ignaz Herman Körner, founded the club in 1909. Influenced by Max Nordau's doctrine of "Muscular Judaism" (German: Muskeljudentum), they named the club "Hakoah" (Hebrew: הכח), meaning "the strength".
Hakoah Vienna was one of the first football teams to market themselves globally by travelling frequently where they would attract thousands of Jewish fans to their matches against local teams in cities such as London and New York. On the team's trip to London in 1923, they managed to defeat West Ham United by a score of 5–1, admittedly against a largely reserve team. Nevertheless, Hakoah became the first continental club to defeat an English team in England.
In a dramatic game of the 1924-25 season, Hakoah's Hungarian-born goalkeeper Alexander Fabian broke his arm. The rules at the time didn't allow substitutions so Fabian put his arm in a sling and switched positions with a forward. Seven minutes later Fabian scored the winning goal, clinching Hakoah's league championship.
In 1926, the team conducted a highly successful tour of the United States. Their game at New York City's Polo Grounds attracted 46,000 spectators, a record at the time. Many of the team's players, impressed by the relative lack of anti-Semitism they found, decided to stay in the United States accepting offers to play for American clubs. Several of these players formed a club called Hakoah All-Stars which won the U.S. Open Cup in 1929. A few players moved to Palestine and founded Hakoah Tel-Aviv football club there. The loss of so many talented players effectively put an end to the Austrian football team's competitiveness.
The athletic club's success extended beyond the football pitch. Hakoah had highly successful sections in wrestling, fencing, water polo, and swimming among other sports. Watermarks, a 2004 documentary film, tells the story of the Hakoah women's swim team with historical footage from the 1930s and contemporary interviews with surviving team members.
Because of the Anschluss of 1938, the German Football Association banned the club and nullified their games. Their stadium was appropriated and given to the Nazi party. In 1945 the club was founded again an exists till today, only the football-team, which was played in the second division of the Austrian championship after World War II was defunct in 1949.
[edit] Support
Support for Hakoah spread around Europe rapidly as Jews as far as Russia and the United States avidly supported Hakoah Wien who took advantage of such support by setting up very successful tours and friendlies. As the first "Jewish" team, Hakoah attracted the attention of prominent Jewish figures including author Franz Kafka.
[edit] Players
[edit] Famous Former players
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[edit] Honours
- Austrian Championship titles: 1
- 1924/25
- 2. Klasse A/II. Liga titles: 2
- 1919/20, 1928/29
[edit] See also
- Judith Haspel, a swimmer from the highly successful Hakoah women's swimming team.
[edit] References
- Foer, Franklin, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, New York: Harper Collins, 2004 (ISBN 0-06-621234-0)
- "Hakoah-Vienna" in the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
- Encyclopaedia Judaica
[edit] External links
- Official in German and English.
- Watermarks at the Internet Movie Database
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