Of empty kit cases and bloodstained baths

The entrance hall of the local history museum, where Siegbert Hoffmann has also lovingly created a little TSG exhibition in one of the back rooms, exudes the charm of a rustic pub from the postwar era: old photographs of Hoffenheim hang on the wall, curtains hang in front of the windows, Hoffmann and Bartmann have taken their places at the table on wooden chairs. Bartmann is wearing a TSG cap - the only things missing are some beers, but it's too early in the day for that. Even without the alcohol, tongues are loose. They're talking about the old days, after all - and about their TSG.

Siegbert Hoffmann, born 1939, came to Sinsheim when he was eleven years old, before he later "married into" Hoffenheim. He first came into contact with football through the World Cup in 1954, and the first club he joined was SV Sinsheim. Siegbert Hoffmann was actively playing at TSG from 1967 to 1992, and from 1976 to 2000, with a two-year break from 1989-91, the trained master carpenter was head of the football department

Fritz Bartmann was born in 1940 in Hoffenheim, diagonally opposite the local history museum on Waibstadter Road, where he also grew up. Before the World Cup in 1954, the youngsters mostly used to play football on the streets, which were mostly free of cars. Or on the 'flatlands', as the field which has now become the school playing field was known in those days. "Hoffenheim was divided into two parts: the left hand side of the main road, and the right hand side", Bartmann recalls. Dietmar Hopp lived "on the other side", close to the train station, where people also used to play football.

When it rained heavily, the pitch overflowed into the village

The "miracle of Bern", which most Hoffenheimers followed in front of a television in the "Ratskeller", changed everything. The football fever spread. Football was being played everywhere, in all weather, wherever there was space. Not just on the "flatlands" or on the sports field by the forest "im Rot" (now the Dietmar Hopp Stadium); the open space on "Dühren Hill" was also taken over by the football enthusiasts. However, the "Ox Head Stadium" was too small for the regional league. "Half a season was played there, but then opposition teams refused to play here", says Hoffmann.

After the Second World War, TSG had found its home up on the sports field by the forest. Cows pulling carts were led over the field to make it usable - that's pitch maintenance in the 1950s for you. "When there was snow on the ground, we still used to play. The referee had a furrow drawn in the snow, and if the ball could still roll without a problem, he blew the whistle to start the match", says Hoffmann. The area is elevated a few metres above the centre of the village. "When it rained really hard, half the pitch was washed down into the village", Bartmann recalls, with such animation it's as if it still happens regularly. 

As a result, the villagers often had to get involved. Not just in getting rid of the mud in the streets, but generally in maintaining the pitch. "I got up at four every day and walked up to the pitch to turn on the sprinkler", says Bartmann, whose primary day job was as a zookeeper in Heidelberg. "For me, everything revolved around football and TSG, I was painter, groundskeeper, head of department, youth coach, and of course a player."

Other TSG members also performed outstanding services, people like Heinz Seyfert, Dieter Kundt and Werner Wiedemann. And then there was Wilhelm Schilling, an explosives expert who worked at Nussloch quarry. "Now and then he carried out a few explosions, which really pleased the residents", says Bartmann. However, the hope that the water would drain away into the holes made by the explosions did not come to fruition. The field, which was directly next to a rock face, generally remained a bog. So trees were planted so that the roots would hold the ground in place. "The old men kept the club alive", say the two pensioners. "The biggest source of income were the village fetes. The proceeds were used to buy the goals for the U11s, for example."

Umbrella attacks and cup victory

Back then, there was neither time nor money for "proper football". "The train journey to Stuttgart cost 50 pennies, which we couldn't afford." The Bundesliga, founded in 1963, was a long way off. Hoffenheim football took place exclusively in the Kraichgau. Mostly in the B-league, apart from a few forays into the A-league. Heated contests in Daisbach, Reichartshausen or Untergimpern. "It wasn't uncommon for people to break a foot, or get attacked with umbrellas by angry spectators", Hoffmann recalls.

Even though interest in the club outside of the region was lacking, these events caused a sensation in Hoffenheim, and are deeply rooted in Hoffmann's and Bartmann's memories. The year 1961, for example, when TSG won four championship titles: with the first team, the reserves, the youth team and the junior team. "That was all the teams we had." Or when TSG once upset their stronger neighbouring team FC Zuzenhausen in the cup. "They were technically better than us, but we didn't give them a chance," says Bartmann. Once, TSG even won the county cup. "We beat TSV Steinsfurt in Gemmingen. 3-1 or 4-1, we can't quite remember any more." The two men also struggle to remember the year it happened. "It was under coach Wolfgang Frey, so it must have been between 1966 and 1969." That's a good enough estimate - most importantly: they won the cup!

At the start of the 1970s, TSG also got their first sponsor. This wasn't what it says in one book about TSG - "Zimmermann building materials" - but "Cafe Don Quijote", which now no longer exists but which donated an allowance for shirts. Later on, the Adler brewery from Zuzenhausen was emblazoned on the chests of the TSG players. "Having adverts on shirts still wasn't allowed at the time", says Hoffmann. "I had to travel to Karlsruhe especially to get the special permit stamped."

Clubhouse as a means of existence

In this period between 1969 and 1971, the new clubhouse was also built. "It was independently built by Hoffenheimers and it was unparalleled in the region", Hoffmann and Bartmann explain proudly. "We can't name all the people who were involved in building it, or add up the hours of work that went into it, but on behalf of everyone, two people have to be named: Hermann Zuber und Gerhard Schmitt. Zuber was the club treasurer for eight years and regularly risked his own capital to settle invoices for materials so that it was possible to keep building. Schmitt was a builder from Dühren, who also moved to Hoffenheim when he married and later played for the TSG veterans' team.

For a B-league team, the size of the clubhouse was unprecedented. The business enterprise formed the financial basis of the club's expenditures. "We ran it ourselves via our own leases", says Hoffmann, who himself took on the role of clubhouse landlord for five years. He was followed by Schmitt, who performed the role from 1984-1989. In 1999 the clubhouse had to make way for the building of the main stands of the Dietmar Hopp Stadium.

The "cardboard box" chased the players up the steps

Long before a certain Felix Magath discovered the steps in Wolfsburg for himself and made his first team run up them, TSG coach Reinhard Hassert had been using the same training method since the middle of the 1970s. "There were 136 steps that the "cardboard box" used to chase us up to get to the sports field by the forest," Hoffmann and Bartmann reflect without fondness on these sessions.

Of course, the "Hoffenheim boys" all knew one another. "We all went to primary school together." They were very close to the location where the firm Zimmerman now has its headquarters. "Later on, Dietmar Hopp came to be on good terms with Klaus Zimmermann, they had a close connection." Both played in the TSG first team. Bartmann also remembers "Kempny Herbert in goal" and mentions names like Herbert Hauert and Norbert Eichstädter. "Back then, we had four or five people in our special training squad." Gerhard Spies was the first "paid" coach at the club - he had come from Mannheim and had also "married into" Hoffenheim. For training the players, he was rewarded with a pair of football boots every year.

A butcher's shop for a changing room

Yes, of course Hoffmann also knows the frequently told story about the Leberwurst that one generous Hoffenheimer promised to outside-left Dietmar Hopp for every goal scored: "That was Engelhardt, the farmer. There were also members who sponsored Dietmar Hopp's train journey from Karlsruhe, where he was based, to the home games."

The anecdotes that Hoffmann and Bartmann have at their disposal would be enough to fill many an evening and many a book. They tell of empty kit cases at away games because someone forgot to prepare the kit. Or of bottles of cognac leaking in shirt pockets. Or of the opposing team having to get changed in a butcher's shop because there was no changing room - in the room with the bloodstained baths, of all places. After a game, they showered using the well in the street. "There were showers in Sinsheim, but there weren't any in the villages yet. We cleaned our football boots in the gutter. Sometimes we got a bucket of warm water from a pub, which had to do for everyone."

Back then there were also "bureaucratic problems" which from today's perspective seem unimaginable. For example, one sought-after player had to wait weeks before he was approved to play. Why? His passport application hadn't been sent, because they wanted to wait for more applications first so they could save postage costs. Another time - the player in question was the much sought-after centre-forward Manfred Feßenbecker from FC Zuzenhausen - Hoffmann had to rush to Heidelberg late one evening to post a certified letter in time, because that was the only place in the region where there was a post office that stayed open until midnight.

Heated meetings in the "Adler"

Where the butcher's shop Hess now stands there used to be the guesthouse "Zum Adler". This was where meetings of the players and the committee used to take place - and it would often get very heated. "We had a very well-run gymnastics department, which not only took part in championships in Baden, but also produced lots of champions, like Regina Hauert, Manfred and Helmut Gilbert, and Inge Specht, for example", Hoffmann explains. "Not to mention Kalman Konya, who made it into the German Olympic shotput squad."

But there were sometimes differences of opinion between the gymnasts and the footballers when it came to the finances. Sometimes alcohol played a role. Once, a committee was elected long past midnight - and was barely in a fit state to seal its election with a signature. At this point in time, the Bundesliga was still light years away.

In the years before the war, the "Rössel" was where the club's members used to meet. The gymnastics club was founded here in 1899, and until 1914 it was the club's meeting place. It belonged to the Ludwig family, which produced, among others, Dr. Julius Ludwig. He was actively involved in the club at the time it was founded, before he became mayor in Cologne in the 1940s, shortly before the era of Konrad Adenauer, and later returned to Hoffenheim. Today, the "Ludwighof", which houses a farm shop and a cafe, is located here, diagonally opposite the local history museum.

Transition to the new era

We are nearing the new era. At the end of the 1980s, Hoffmann had to take a short break and hand over the office of head of the football department to Siegbert Eichstädter for two years. As a shop fitter, his employer from Neidenstein often sent him out all over the world - to Kyiv, or the Caribbean island of Aruba, among other places.

By the end of his first term in office, TSG had brought first league goal scorer Peter Podkalicki to Hoffenheim as a coach. "Podder" left the club after only one year, after losing in the relegation play-offs against the FC Stebbach first team. That was in 1989. Eventually Dietmar Hopp offered to help. The rest is history.

Berberig became president of the club in 1991, and Hoffmann returned as head of the football department. The two of them put together the commemorative publication marking TSG's 100th birthday in 1999 - without them, the valuable chronicle of the club that it contains wouldn't exist. For the 75th anniversary of the football department in 1996, Hoffmann had already added to, improved, and brought the records up to date, which until then had been inadequate. Among other things, he was able, using original documents, to establish the previously unknown date of the unification of the gymnastics club and the football club: 7 March 1946.

In 1998 Peter Hoffmann was elected first chairperson of TSG. "Peter was a good friend of Dietmar Hopp, who thought the world of him. It was just a good fit," Hoffmann says of the ex-president, who passed away in 2020.

"Players like Erwin Rupp and Michael Groß were our first top recruits in the mid-1990s," says Bartmann. "Later on, more exceptional footballers like Jürgen Maurer, Nešo Đurić, and especially Alfred Schön also joined," Hoffmann adds. Most players worked for the SAP. At first, TSG as a club couldn't keep up with the pace of the change. "Coach Raimund Lietzau was let go in the car park after losing a match in Sinsheim," Hoffmann recalls. 

Hoffmann and Bartmann enjoy reminiscing about the good old days when it was a village club. It's not surprising, therefore, that when asked about their best TSG moment, their replies are the same: "When we got promoted to the Sinsheim regional league. The team consisted only of Hoffenheimers, who without exception played without any kind of remuneration. Only those doing military service got a small travel allowance."

It was nice talking about the old days. But their wives are waiting at home with lunch ready for them. Before they go, Hoffmann and Bartmann stand in front of the local history museum for a photo. They live by the mantra: "It's not about how old you are, but how you are old." They haven't kicked a ball for a long time now. Bartmann dedicates all of his time to his family and his garden. Hoffmann has found a new way to occupy his free time: the typewriter museum.