Friedrich "Fritz" Herkenrath is a former football goalkeeper for Germany at the 1958 FIFA World Cup. He earned 21 caps between 1954 and 1958. He took his club team Rot-Weiss Essen to the peak of its history and won a national championship in 1955. The following season, Rot-Weiss Essen became the first German side to qualify for the European Cup. Initially, Herkenrath played handball. He started out as a right winger and only later became a goalkeeper. Soon after World War II, Herkenrath switched from handball to football. Herkenrath began studying at the German Sport University Cologne where he first encountered Sepp Herberger, who was a tutor there. Playing for 1. FC K�ln in the early 1950s, Herkenrath was mostly the second goalkeeper behind the Dutchman Frans de Munck. He joined Rot-Wei� Essen in 1952 and soon rose to prominence playing for Essen. Herkenrath became known as the "flying schoolmaster" due to his main occupation as a teacher. He retired in 1962 after 336 games in the Oberliga West and became a professor at the college of education in Aachen. [More at Wikipedia]

September 9th, 1928 in Cologne  /  Died:   Apr 18th, 2016