Peter Krohn is dead: Obituary for HSV manager

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Peter Krohn, the legendary manager of HSV

Photo: imago sportfotodienst

The thing about the jerseys in pink and baby blue.

Peter Krohn was often annoyed when he was regularly asked about it first.

As if, as President and Manager of Hamburger SV, he hadn't done other sensational things as well.

But the jersey color issue was just as typical for Krohn.

For whom the Bundesliga has always meant a show, at a time when the coaches were still standing on the sidelines as gym instructors in training suits and the teams still found their way to the game after fighting.

As HSV manager, Krohn had suggested at the time that the professionals wear “women-affine” colors. A fashion show was then organized, and whoever came was allowed to vote on the color.

With the result that Schorsch Volkert, Manfred Kaltz, Felix Magath and Co. appeared in pink.

Allegedly as a result, the proportion of women at HSV games rose to ten percent, Krohn later boasted.

And the “Campari” logo was emblazoned on these jerseys, because Krohn had of course also found an advertising partner for the jerseys.

After Eintracht Braunschweig with the famous Jägermeister logo, HSV was the second first division club to advertise its shirts.

Alcohol advertising and football back then still belonged together seamlessly and as a matter of course.

Something unhanseatic was happening in Hamburg

Krohn was only four years at the helm at HSV, two years from 1973 to 1975 as president, then two years as so-called general manager, but the busy Krohn, who actually came from newspaper management and previously worked for Springer Verlag, among others, stuck in those four years had been active, so much into it that it made stories for decades.

The newspapers soon had their title for what was going on in Hamburg so unhanseatic: Circus Krohn.

In the past, HSV has had several unusual, sometimes charismatic, but at least unconventional leadership figures, for example the SPD politician and interior senator Werner Hackmannn or Jürgen Hunke with his huge Buddha collection, meandering between local politics and theater management.

Not to forget that club icon Uwe Seeler also tried his hand at being president of the club, but Krohn is certainly one of the most colorful guys who have designed things at HSV.

When nobody knew what PR was, Krohn was already doing it.

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Coach Rudi Gutendorf and Peter Krohn, that didn't go well for long

Photo: imago sportfotodienst / imago / WEREK

For him, football was always hype, popular amusement, the main thing was to keep talking.

So he made sure that elephants appeared in training.

From time to time, Bavarian marching bands, which accompanied HSV training, also trumpet.

Or he hired Mike Krüger, who sang his "Mein Gott Walther" in front of the masses.

When the HSV stayed in a hotel where rock star Tina Tournament also resided, he quickly arranged a meeting between the footballers and her.

Of course, the Hamburg press was there when Turner shook hands with the professionals.

It didn't fit with Klötzer

I not only took care of Krohn that the club appeared on the colorful pages, he also had sporting ambitions.

He was happy to interfere in the line-up of the coach Kuno Klötzer, who was already little valued by him. His frequently heard sentence - "It's just a suggestion" - was meant very differently.

At some point, Klötzer was so annoyed that he fled and signed with league rivals Hertha BSC.

However, Krohn couldn't have been that wrong with his suggestions for the team line-up.

In the Krohn years, after mediocre seasons before, HSV rose again to a top team, also due to Krohn's personnel policy: With Willi Reimann, Ferdi Keller and Arno Steffenhagen, he signed three offensive forces who helped to achieve the greatest triumph of HSV in celebrating this decade: the triumph of May 11, 1977, when HSV won the European Cup Winners' Cup with a 2-0 win over RSC Anderlecht.

In the pink jersey, of course.

The year before, HSV had already brought the German Cup to Hamburg with a 2-0 win over 1. FC Kaiserslautern.

The good years of HSV began, which under Krohn's successor Günter Netzer and coach Ernst Happel became the great years of HSV.

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Peter Krohn with his start transfer Kevin Keegan

Photo: imago sportfotodienst

Krohn laid the foundation stone for this, because he achieved his greatest coup in his last year as a manager.

Elephants and marching music, all well and good, but a real world star from England at Hamburger SV, that was the icing on the cake.

Krohn arranged the transfer of Kevin Keegan, who rushed from success to success with Liverpool FC in those years.

Keegan was perhaps the biggest attraction in the Bundesliga at the end of the 1970s, but he was definitely the biggest number in the Krohn circus.

Trip to the ARD show

The great successes of the Keegan-Elf with the championship 1979 saw Krohn no longer in office and dignity.

A year earlier he had had such a falling out with the coach Rudi Gutendorf, who was signed as Klötzer's successor, that first the coach and then the manager had to leave.

However, this did not drive Krohn out of the show.

At ARD, he tried his hand at the show master on the program “Der Superschuss”, where football professionals had to play little games against the clock and then were shot at goal with a ball cannon.

That was what it sounds like, and that's how the show was quickly crushed again.

Krohn's legendary command to his assistant remains when he announced a game: "Sissi, please whistle."

At Hamburger SV, he celebrated a comeback in 1998 as a member of the supervisory board, and later he liked to comment on his view of HSV from behind the scenes, not always to the delight of his successors.

Krohn died on Thursday at the age of 89.

And he was right: he was really much more than the man who brought the pink jerseys to the Bundesliga.