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One of the success stories of the Prussians in their only year in the Bundesliga: 4-2 against Duisburg
Photo: dpa / picture alliance / dpa
Anyone who can still remember Manfred Pohlschmidt's goal has grown old in Münster.
After all, it has been almost 60 years since Manfred “Manni” Pohlschmidt met in the 75th minute.
Pohlschmidt's nickname was Lattenschmidt because he often hit the post and the crossbar.
On that May 9, 1964, however, he hit the goal.
Pohlschmidt scored the 4-2.
It was the last Bundesliga club in the history of Prussia Munster.
The opponent at the time was Hertha BSC.
With the Berliners Otto Rehhagel and Uwe Klimaschewski, the later coaching legends, were in the team.
The victory did not help the Münsteranern, however, the Prussians had to relegate anyway - because competitor Hertha had one point more in the table and saved the league as 14th in the then 16-league, while Münster ended up on the bottom line as 15th and never saw the Bundesliga again afterwards.
So you can definitely say that Preußen Münster, today Regionalliga West, still has an account with Hertha.
It might have to be settled this evening in the second round of the DFB Cup (6.30 p.m. Sky, SPIEGEL live ticker), when the first division team Hertha BSC is visiting the fourth division Prussia Münster.
Football has been forgotten
Münster is a cliché city.
The cyclists, the Anabaptist cages at the Lamberti Church, the Catholic, either it's raining or the bells are ringing.
Plus the slapstick crime scene with Börne and Thiel.
Football doesn't really belong in this list.
The fact that the Prussians were once a real number in German football has been forgotten over the decades.
Founding member of the Bundesliga: What Bayern Munich and Borussia Mönchengladbach can't say about themselves - in Münster it's on the business card.
Prussia's Glory.
Even if it was only a single year: Under coach Richard Schneider, Münster at least won 2-1 at Schalke, beat VfB Stuttgart and the first Bundesliga runner-up MSV Duisburg 4-2 - and they defied HSV with Uwe Seeler and Charly Dörfel Season opener a 1: 1.
It was a year to remember with your head held high.
Sometimes, however, you have the feeling that the club is exaggerating its memory.
The stadium on Hammer Strasse was one of the most modern in the country in the 1960s and regularly filled with 40,000 enthusiastic Westphalians, but that was a long time ago.
There have been many attempts to bring the stadium up to date, most of the time it failed because of the money or noise protection.
Now they want to try it again: The demolition of the grandstands will begin in 2022, the beginning of a post-and-post renovation of the stadium.
40,000 no longer fit in here, the capacity has shrunk to 15,000.
Looking after the Westphalian competition
A lot has shrunk in Prussia over the past 57 years, in which one bobbed back and forth between the 2nd and 4th league.
The last guest appearance in the 2nd division is now over 30 years.
At some point the club lost the connection, after 50 years the stadium turf from the Bundesliga time was replaced in 2012.
The Westphalian competition has made it up again and again in the meantime, not to mention Arminia Bielefeld, SC Paderborn, Schalke, Bochum and Dortmund.
Above all, there was a lot of ambition in Münster.
Roger Schmidt - formerly at Leverkusen, now in Eindhoven - spent his young coaching years here, the great Bert Trautmann tried his hand at coaching here, Benno Möhlmann, Werner Biskup, Gerd Roggensack, they all have SC Preußen Münster in the second class at best can lift.
The list of former players is even more prominent: from Siggi Held to Erwin Kostedde, from Christoph Metzelder to Ansgar Brinkmann, from BVB icon Adi "Crucial is on the pitch" Preißler to today's Stuttgart coach Pellegrino Matarazzo.
The past is the past, the present is fourth in the Regionalliga West behind Rot-Weiss Essen, Wuppertaler SV and Fortuna Köln.
A sentence that sounds like something out of a history and story book of West German football.
In these regions, nostalgia still makes a big difference, but coach Sascha Hildmann and sports director Peter Niemeyer, a man with a Hertha past, probably don't want to know much about it at the moment.
Moving into the second round has already brought the club half a million euros.
They are happy to take them in Münster, even if in the end they only made progress because of the embarrassing mistake made by opponents VfL Wolfsburg.
That was ticked off in Münster, although Niemeyer said that he actually couldn't really look forward to progressing because it came about at the Green Table.
But the focus is once again: Almost 11,000 spectators are expected in the evening, Hertha is of course the clear favorite, but with a guest from Berlin you never know whether he will make another breakdown.
You always trust the capital to do something like that.
Manfred Pohlschmidt, the club's last Bundesliga scorer, opened a lottery ticket office in the city after his career.
That is also a bit of the history of Preußen Münster.
