Albert Richter

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Albert Richter, mid to late 1930s
Albert Richter, mid to late 1930s
Albert Richter, wearing the World Champion 1932 suit. Ms. Franz notes on this that that the picture, due to Belgian custom, was ordered and applicated to the tombstone by Richter's Belgian friend and former competitor Jef Scherens, in 1955.
Albert Richter, wearing the World Champion 1932 suit. Ms. Franz notes on this that that the picture, due to Belgian custom, was ordered and applicated to the tombstone by Richter's Belgian friend and former competitor Jef Scherens, in 1955.
Albert Richter's tomb
Albert Richter's tomb

Albert Richter (Köln-Ehrenfeld, October 4, 1912 - Lörrach, January 2, 1940), was a German cyclist. In 1932, after surprisingly winning classical Grand Prix de Paris, he also became amateur world champion of sprint on the track on September 3.

Arnold grew up in Sömmeringstraße 72, Ehrenfeld, suburb of Cologne. His father wanted him to learn some skilled trade, as he himself had, but at the same time wanted to give him (and his two brothers) some education as a musician. The boy took lessons on violin besides being apprenticed as a kind of stuccoist.

Cologne being a heartland of German cycling at that time, the boy was more fascinated by sports and started to race at the age of 16 without telling his father, who seems to have been quite upset when he found out about it, when young Albert broke his clavicle in an accident.

Being jobless in 1932,[1] he decided to become a professional. His Jewish trainer and manager Ernst Berliner sent him to Paris, which was at that time the center of European track cycling, where Richter, although reported to be homesick, was quite successful. He from then on spent more time abroad than in Germany. [2] He now rather was part of an international "gang" of sprinters, many of whom were close friends; especially Belgian Jef Scherens and French Louis Gérardin, together with Richter known as "The Three Musketeers". For instance, the World championship, Leipzig 1934, was won by Scherens, with Richter 2nd, and Gérardin 3rd. Richter made the top 3 in of the World Championship track sprint from 1933 to 1938[3].

Richter was against nazism: He refused to collaborate with any other manager than Jewish Ernst Berliner, he didn't give the Hitler salute, didn't wear jerseys with swastica when he raced and in 1939 also refused to participate in World War II.

The Nazis obviously didn't forgive these humiliations. In January 1940 he was captured by Gestapo while trying to escape to Switzerland, and money that he wanted to bring out of the country for another Jewish friend was confiscated. Officially he committed suicide soon after by hanging, which seemed hard to believe to the rest of world: when one of his brothers tried to see him on January 2, he was shown Albert's corpse in the hospital's morgue. The corpse was bathed in blood, and his suit full of holes. After the World War II, Ernst Berliner tried to know the truth about the death of Richter, but was unsuccessful.

In his honour, in 1997, the new Köln velodrome was baptized with his name Albert Richter[4][5].

[edit] References

  1. ^ ...and, due to his frequent absence from home, he also had difficulties in getting unemployment benefit: He therefore had to refuse to participate in international events more often than once.
  2. ^ Partially, this was because Six-day races could not profitably be arranged in Germany after a change of rules enacted by the Nazi on January 1, 1934. At the other hand, there were no adequate competitors for him in Germany any more.
  3. ^ MEN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS - SPRINT. UCI. Retrieved on 2008-01-06.
  4. ^ Bueker, Thorsten. Bahnradsport in Köln hat Tradition... ('Track cycling has a long tradition in Cologne') (German). Official site of Cologne Velodrome. Retrieved on 2008-01-06.
  5. ^ Schuermann, Ralph. Velodrome Cologne/Radstadion Köln-Müngersdorf. Schuermann Architects. Retrieved on 2008-01-06.

[edit] External links

(Google does not seem to find any EN websites on this sportsman; there is only one book on him, in German: Franz, Renate: Der vergessene Weltmeister. Das rätselhafte Schicksal des Radrennfahrers Albert Richter, Covadonga, 2007.)