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Juergen Noeldner
Photo: Werner Schulze / IMAGO
He was left-footed, which wasn't common in the GDR.
But the goal that brought Jürgen Nöldner lasting statistical value was scored with the right.
In 1965, people didn't count the seconds, as they certainly would have done today.
But one thing is clear: Nöldner's goal in the World Cup qualifier against Austria on October 31, 1965 came in the first minute - and was and remained the earliest goal ever scored by a GDR international.
Limiting Nöldner to this one action would almost be a fall from grace, given such a full life that the Berliner led for 81 years.
He died on Monday.
His father was murdered by the Nazis
Actually, you have to start telling your story even before Nöldner was born.
His father Erwin was active in the resistance against the Nazi dictatorship, he had joined the group around the communist Anton Saefkow, which was tracked down by the Gestapo in 1944.
Erwin Nöldner was sentenced to death and executed in September 1944 when little Jürgen was just three years old.
Today, Nöldnerstraße and Nöldnerplatz in Berlin keep the memory of the resistance fighter Nöldner alive.
After the war, the fatherless Jürgen Nöldner threw himself into football, and if you look more closely, you have to say: into football in Berlin-Lichtenberg.
The district in the east of the city was his home from the beginning to the end of his life, he didn't leave here, even if the GDR officials would have liked it so much.
In loyalty to the ASK/Vorwarts
Because the club where he was to put down his roots, ASK Forward, was transferred from Berlin to Frankfurt/Oder by sports officials in 1971. That was part of the major reorganization of GDR football that the SED was undertaking at the time.
Nöldner was already a star there, he was supposed to be the face of the relocated club in Frankfurt/Oder, but the apparatchiks had reckoned without him, who was himself a SED member.
The player, already decorated with 30 international matches for East Germany, third at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, experienced in more than 200 games in the East German Oberliga, he only did it for a few months - then he ended his football career without further ado.
At the age of 31 and actually still in the best of juices.
He was GDR champion five times
He missed the best years of East German football from 1972, the Olympic Games in Munich and the 1974 World Cup in West Germany.
His name is therefore often missing when it comes to the greats of Eastern football: Dixie Dörner, Jürgen Sparwasser, Joachim Streich.
Normally you would just have to line up Nöldner there.
88 league goals, 16 goals in the national team, Nöldner's left foot had a built-in goal guarantee.
He was champion five times with the army sports club, once a cup winner, the decisive goal in the 1970 final against Lok Leipzig was scored in the 86th minute, of course, by Nöldner.
Kuppe, that was his nickname, even the "kicker" couldn't find out exactly where the name came from.
At some point he got stuck with Nöldner.
He was Kuppe Nöldner, the sixties and seventies, it was also the time of the wonderful nicknames in football, from Katsche to duck and Emma to terrier.
The newspapers sometimes called him the "Puskas of the East," which is a bit odd because the major and left-footed Hungarian also came from Eastern Europe and only later earned his money in the west with Real Madrid.
The "Bild" newspaper sometimes went so far as to call itself the "Fritz Walter of the East", it is these comparisons that East German football had to put up with time and again.
Nöldner was not enthusiastic about it either – although few knew better how the media worked.
Because Nöldner remained true to football after his career, but he switched to the other side of the desk, so to speak.
He became a renowned sports and football journalist for decades.
At first he worked for the Sportecho and the legendary fuwo, the football week, during the GDR era.
After the fall of the Wall, he switched to »kicker« and later became the Berlin office manager of the football magazine.
In his warming obituary, the "kicker" wrote about his former colleague: "He was a loyal soul and an honest person, gifted as a footballer, modest as a person." very.
The game against Austria with the fastest GDR goal ended 1-0.
Anything else would have been inappropriate.