Welcoming speech from Dr Thomas Grethlein, chairman of the Nuremberg Football Club’s supervisory board, at the laying of the stumbling stones on 30 April 2023
A very warm welcome to all of you here, at the laying of stumbling stones in memory of the former Jewish chairman of the Nuremberg Football Club, Dr Leopold Neuburger, his widow Hedwig, who was murdered in a concentration camp, and their children Hilde and Kurt. This laying of stumbling stones has been organised by the Nuremberg Football Club, in co-operation with the history society Geschichte Für Alle (History for Everyone).
We are delighted that you are here today to honour Dr Leopold Neuburger’s family. “We cannot ‘get over’ or ‘come to terms with’ these atrocities that Germans approved of (or at least tolerated), organised and carried out.” The historian Götz Aly wrote these words a short while ago. What we can do however, is become aware of, and remember these terrible things that the perpetrators did. Above all, we should not forget the victims. We must remember them and combine this remembrance with the demand that everything be done so that this does not happen again. You will forgive me if I do not greet everyone personally, yet I would like to welcome some people in particular:
• SPD Councillor Michael Ziegler; representing Lord Mayor Marcus König. As we know each other personally, I would like to say that it is good to see you here today, Michael.
• Jurij Kopf, Board Member of the Israeli Cultural Community in Nuremberg
• Dr Pascal Metzger, Research Associate at Geschichte Für Alle
• Leonhard Stöcklein, Assistant at the Chair for Didactics at the University of Erlangen/Nuremberg
• Thomas Schneider, Head of the Fan Relations Department of the German Football League
• The author Matthias Hunger, who has made an outstanding contribution to the football cosmos of Nuremberg Football Club und has collected 100 places of remembrance together in one book
• Christiane Krodel and Werner Schönberger from the press
• Und last but not least, it is a very special honour to greet Yvonne Rothschild, daughter of the Jewish club member Walther Seefried Rothschild, who survived Buchenwald. At the same time, dear Ms Rothschild, we wish you a very happy birthday today.
On 30 April 1933, 90 years ago today, Nuremberg Football Club expelled its Jewish members and was the first football club in Germany to do so – in overeagerness to obey and without orders from above.
Overnight, 142 Jewish members were expelled. For those affected, this was a veritable turning point. Just a few weeks after the Nazis had come to power in Germany, Nuremberg Football Club made it clear to these members that they no longer belonged to the institution, simply because they were Jews.
The club management will commemorate this anti-Semitic act every year on 30 April with the laying of stumbling stones for the expelled Jewish club members and their families. We begin with the laying of stumbling stones for the Neuburger family. There is a reason for this: In so doing, we remember the former chairman, the Jewish lawyer Dr Leopold Neuburger, his wife Hedwig – who was murdered in a concentration camp – and their two children Hilde and Kurt, who survived the Shoah by immigrating to Great Britain.
You will receive more details about their biographies from Bernd Siegler, who has rendered an outstanding service by carrying out research into the lives of the expelled members, based on the discovery of membership cards in the cellar of the Nuremberg Football Club.
Many are aware that Kurt Landauer, the president of Bayern Munich Football Club, was Jewish. However, few know that the Nuremberg Football Club also had a Jewish president, the lawyer Dr Leopold Neuburger. It is not widely known that Jewish functionaries, football players and trainers played an important part in the upsurge of football in Germany after 1900 – that applies to the German Football League, Bayern Munich, Eintracht Frankfurt, our club and many others.
We want to remember this and provide a worthy commemoration of the Jewish members who were expelled from the club 90 years ago, by laying stumbling stones in front of the houses where they lived. They will thereby become part of the largest decentralised memorial in the world. Over 75,000 stumbling stones in Germany and in 21 European countries commemorate the fate of people who were persecuted, murdered, deported, expelled or driven to commit suicide. Now the stumbling stones are also a memorial to the Neuburger family.
Thank you to Geschichte Für Alle e.V. (History for Everyone) and all who have come here today.
