When Quin Curly was ‘crowned’ in a clubhouse bar
German Rugby has a long, rich history and its possibly surprising they haven’t yet developed as a mainstream rugby nation given the Germanic love of sport and, historically, the existence of a wealthy middle class to pursue the game.
English students at Heidelberg University and the military in Hanover were the first enthusiasts with the Heidelberger Ruderklub being formed in 1872 and DSv78 Hannover being formed six later followed by FC 1880 Frankfurt. German sports clubs have a useful habit of including their year of origin in their title.
The German Federation was formed in 1900 and the Frankfurt club invited to represent Germany at the 1900 Olympics in Paris where they gave France a major shock, leading 14-5 at half-time before losing 27-17. The German side were meant to play a second match against Moseley Wanderers, representing Great Britain, but the Wanderers players couldn’t organise the necessary time off work and the game was cancelled.
The Wanderers did, however, manage an away day to Paris two weeks later to play the French, losing 27-8. Technically Germany should have won the silver in isolation having both recorded a better result against France than Great Britain and been ready and able to fulfil the scheduled fixtures against the Wanderers. In those more gentlemanly times, however, it was agreed the silver medal be shared.
The Frankfurt club developed close ties with Harlequins during the early part of the 20th century and, on at least three occasions, hosted the Londoners, one of the strongest in the land under the leadership of Adrian Stoop. The Germans lost all three games but were always competitive and Stoop himself always considered the Frankfurt fly-half Oscar Kreutzer as one of the best backs he ever encountered.
These Easter trips were also remembered for some prodigious apres Rugby drinking with Quins’ England prop Curly Hammond to the fore. Hammond turned up late at one of the formal post-match dinners and was jokingly fined ten schooners of beer by the Frankfurt . To the astonishment of all concerned Hammond duly complied, steadily necking a procession of frothing beers before standing up on his chair to demolish the last four.
The Germans, no mean beer drinkers themselves, were impressed and promptly crowned Hammond the “Beer King of Germany” a nickname that stuck. His record remains unchallenged although, to the disappointment of many, Jason Leonard never mounted a formal record breaking attempt.
After World War I there was clearly little appetite initially for Germany to be included in international competition and German Rugby became very inward looking until the end of the Twenties when there was a thaw in attitudes and they played France on four occasions and organised one-off games against Spain and Romania both of which they won. In fact, they were also victorious in one of the French matches winning 17-16 in Frankfurt in 1927 against a French line-up which looks pretty much at full strength for the period.
Kicking on from that, Germany were really quite a rugby force in the Thirties, contesting the FIRA competition and profiting from regular full-on internationals against France once the French had been kicked out of the Five Nations for professionalism and the excessive violence of their club rugby.
Germany were generally dominant against Italy, Romania, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Czech Republic. Only France regularly beat Germany and even then the Germans claimed a famous 3-0 victory in 1938 and on four separate occasions finished within a converted try of the French. They were very much ball park.
Thwarted in their aim to re-establish Rugby as a full Olympic sport at the 1936 Games in Berlin, Germany pointedly hosted and promoted the FIRA competition that year as part of the Games and a very decent mini-competition it proved. Germany beat Italy 19-8 to reach the final while France were much too strong for Romania, winning the second semi-final 25-3.
In the third place play-off Italy squeezed past Romania 8-7 while in the exhibition final France, led by their brilliant Perpignan centre Joseph Desclaux, needed to be on their mettle to beat an inspired German team 19-14.
Two of the starters of both the 1936 and 1938 team were George Isenberg and flanker Erwin Thiesies. The latter survived World War II – 16 capped German players didn’t – and later went on to coach an East German national team for 21 years between 1951-72.
East Germany played a total of 68 Tests mainly against Eastern bloc and Scandinavian opposition and were notably less successful than many of that country’s sporting teams. For example in 14 matches against Romania they failed to record a win.
One noted triumph for East German rugby, though, came in December 1983 when one of their team Burt Weiss achieved worldwide recognition by escaping to West Berlin by braving the icy waters of the River Spree and swimming underwater using a homemade snorkel.
After the War a divided nation went into sharp decline rugbywise with just one or two hotspots continuing to fly the flag. Harlequins continued their long established support and invited the West Germany team to play them at Twickenham in 1956 but that visit was a rare bright spot during a dark period when rugby lost ground to other sports.
Internationally, for decades, Germany knocked around with the weaker teams in FIRA and when European Rugby became more organised EN2 seemed there natural level but there was a brief flirtation with EN1 when they won promotion to the 2009-10 tournament. That did not end well and they were relegated without winning a match and suffered some humiliating defeats, notably a 77-3 trouncing away to Georgia and a 69-0 home defeat to Portugal.
From that low point they have fought their way back and, having regained their EN1 status, avoided relegation in the 2014-16 tournament largely courtesy of a sweet 50-26 win over the Portuguese back in the February. German rugby might not be on the march but it’s definitely on the move again.