Memories of the "Yellow Devils"

2022-12-24T15:30:46.048Z

Memories of the "Yellow Devils" Created: 12/24/2022, 4:20 p.m Many people from Wessling will still remember this: In 1953, the Wessling ice hockey team rose to the first league, to their own amazement. Archivist Erich Ruba has designed a special exhibition for the great years in the community gallery. © Andrea Jaksch In keeping with the season, a new special exhibition can be seen in the Weßlin

Memories of the "Yellow Devils"

Created: 12/24/2022, 4:20 p.m

Many people from Wessling will still remember this: In 1953, the Wessling ice hockey team rose to the first league, to their own amazement.

Archivist Erich Ruba has designed a special exhibition for the great years in the community gallery.

In keeping with the season, a new special exhibition can be seen in the Weßling community gallery.

In “Snowdrift” there are not only pictures of Gottfried Weber to see, but also heroic deeds of ice hockey to marvel at.

Weßling

- Winter has come to Weßling's municipal archive: Gottfried Weber vividly captured the frosty temperatures in his paintings in the exhibition "Snowdrift" - and in an exhibition room, archivist and local historian Erich Rüba looks back 60 years, when 14 Weßlingers grappled with bite and passion shot into the first ice hockey league.

These are memories that some luxuriate in and others marvel at.

The skinny hockey pants that the players climbed into.

And the yellow knit sweater with the inscription "Wessling" that the descendants of the player Albert Dellinger stored in the attic.

Or the shabby leather shoes on runners, in which the colorful Wesslinger troop rushed across the lake and taught the sworn teams the fear - and in 1953 "to the general and our amazement, laboriously rose to the highest ice hockey league" as player Roland von Rebay remembers.

From then on, the 14 “yellow devils” fought for points with other ice hockey giants.

From then on, the "Weßlinger Buam" also chased the puck in the local natural ice stadium.

Under the eyes of sometimes more than 4000 fans, quite a few of whom were carted into small Wessling in buses.

The fighting spirit impressed even the coach of the national team, so that the autodidacts soon played for Germany.

Among them Thomas Schaberer - an honor that was not met with enthusiasm in the family, reports Rüba.

Because his labor power was missing on the farm.

For the farmer himself, his commitment to the national team was a welcome change.

Up to now he had hardly come beyond the borders of Wessling, so he now traveled from Arosa to Canada and Moscow for the games.

"In the hotels, they rode up and down in the lift, fascinated," says Ruba (69), who still remembers a conversation with the now deceased Schaberer.

The ice hockey stars from Wessling completed their training sessions in the natural ice stadium, today's tennis court.

This was created in 1948 "with the support of American occupying forces" in a former gravel pit.

With the disadvantage that the ice melted away at the right temperatures.

All calls for artificial ice came to nothing, which led to the team being relegated four years later due to a lack of training opportunities.

Nevertheless, the wintry spectacle on the frozen Wesslinger See is still reminiscent of the success story of the ice athletes.

Whenever the descendants of the professional players and friends clear the playing fields and fight for the puck on runners.

True ice hockey art can still be seen on Lake Wessling to this day.

At the same time, on the occasion of his 85th birthday, Rüba is presenting the winter pictures by the Weßlingen painter Gottfried Weber.

There, in the watercolor “Bad weather Munich”, a passer-by hides behind a red umbrella to protect himself from the snow and stands out like a splash of color from the gray townhouses.

In his paintings, Weber demonstrates a feeling for the beauty of the barren.

For example in “Neuschnee”, in which a fence separates the pasture from the meadow and runs towards the forest, while isolated blades of grass protrude from the white layer.

In another exhibition room, the winter atmosphere of another century awaits visitors.

Among them were straight, rigid wooden skis, on which the sportsman once fastened his ankle-high, laced leather shoes with a metal buckle.

A magnet is also the photo in which a handful of men fish out chunks of ice from Lake Wessling and hoist them onto a trailer so that they can cool the groceries in the basements of the surrounding inns for a summer.

blowing snow