Walter Schoeller

Walter Schoeller ( born May 12, 1889 in Zurich, † May 16 1979 in Fountain) was a Swiss athlete and sports official and corporate director of cloth and worsted factories Schoeller Switzerland.

Life

Walter Schoeller comes from the line of the Rhine entrepreneurs Schoeller family, which was in 1867 moved to Switzerland to open up new markets there. So it was Walter's grandfather, Wilhelm Rudolf Schoeller (1827-1902), son of Düren entrepreneur Leopold Schoeller, who had moved the family owned Schoeller'sche Kammgarnspinnerei from Wroclaw to Switzerland in Schaffhausen, Derendingen and in the area at the Hardturmstraße in Zurich new factories founded. Caesar Schoeller (1853-1918), son of Rudolf Wilhelm and father of Walter, advanced inventory at Hardturmstraße, he also earned in 1882 as a living and meeting rooms, nor a cloth dyeing. Finally, it was Caesar Schoeller, who organized the 1886 newly founded football club Grasshopper Club Zurich GCZ the appropriate area for a stadium at Hardturmstrasse 321.

In this business and sporting environments, the tendency to competitive sports developed at Walter Schoeller during his youth. He joined early Grasshoppers and initially underwent a successful career as a rower. In addition to two national titles, he and Hans Walter, Max Rudolf, Paul Schmid and Charles Muhr as helmsman in 1912 in Geneva and 1913 in Ghent European Champion in the four with coxswain. In the eighth, he won in a different occupation in 1912 and the European Championship 1911 in Como, 1913, the Vice European Championship.

He then devoted himself to the sport of tennis and managed here in 1918 and 1922 the title of Swiss Champion in the individual and in 1918 an international Swiss champions in men's and mixed doubles. But this was the versatile athlete not enough. In addition to his activities in rowing and tennis he was already very early in the Football Unit, and as a center half in the team that won the 1921 national championships.

After 1924, the Section field hockey was founded in GCZ, Schoeller also found in favor of the sport and reached despite his now already advanced age for an athlete in the years 1926 and 1927, winning the national championship.

Walter Schoeller, who had now successfully completed the training for business leaders and, together with his cousin Arthur Friedrich Schoeller (1881-1953) was, went up to the board of trade under " Schoeller Switzerland " various Swiss family jumped in 1934 to "his " Grasshopper- Club to the side, as after a devastating fire at the Stadium Club was in financial distress. Schoeller acquired the stadium and made ​​this the GCZ free of charge, and therefore able to realize both the club rebuilding the stadium as well as to bear the additional running costs.

In the same year Schoeller, who had been from 1910 to 1913 and 1915, President of the Football section, was elected Central President of the Club, an honorary position which he held until 1976. Subsequently, he was appointed the club on 31 March 1976 its Honorary President. Even to old age was Walter Schoeller, the only one " Mister GC" called in circle of friends, active in sports and practiced his various offices as before his sports with the utmost discipline and conscientiousness. He was initiated at the end of the sixties the " Schoeller- Cup " in honor, which has developed into the largest indoor tennis tournament of the elderly in Switzerland.

After Walter Schoeller had become the sole owner of the textile and Wollgarnimperiums in 1953 after the death of his business partner Arthur Friedrich Schoeller, he put his company in the sixties in the hands of the intermarried and friendly family business Albers, who continued this then as Albers & Co. His personal friend and adopted son Uli Albers led Schoeller additionally also in the management of Grasshoppers clubs and then lodged firmly in his will that the Hardturmareal and Hardturmstraße stadium should pass into the possession of the Albers Group after his death in 1979. After 1997, finally Credit Suisse acquired initially a minority stake of 40 % in the stadium, and is the sole owner from 2002. The former Schoeller area, where after the demolition of the factory between 1997 and 2002 the residential and service overbuilding Limmatwest has arisen belongs, together with a listed tower today about the Hardturmstraße AG the Albers Group.