Time of development: Handball at SCM for 70 years

29 October 1917 is generally regarded as the birth of German handball – because on that Monday the sport was first referred to as handball in this country in a transcript. At that time, the Berlin gymnastics teacher Max Heiser had laid down the rules for the game, which he had developed especially for women from the numerous preliminary forms such as goalball, raffle ball and pushball and which was intended to be less physical as an alternative to football.

This approach, which seems incomprehensible when viewed today, can be explained by the fact that duels as we know them today were forbidden at that time. There was no physical contact. All this was only introduced when handball was redesigned for the male sex and Heiser’s colleague Carl Schelenz not only allowed tackles in Berlin in 1919, but also reduced the size of the ball.

Previously, there were variants with person-sized playground equipment to focus on throwing behavior as opposed to movement. For the sake of simplicity, he took over team size, field dimensions and referees from football.

The new discipline quickly found popularity throughout Germany because it was already considered particularly “attractive and fast-paced” at the time, as news newspapers put it at the time. Clubs such as Fichte and MTV Buckau, Vorwärts Fermersleben and Jahn Westerhüsen are the best examples of this, as are the handball divisions at SC Germania and PSV Magdeburg.

In 1955, SC Aufbau Magdeburg was founded – and thus laid the foundation for the club, which can now claim eleven GDR championships and three all-German victories, three DHB Cup victories as well as 15 international titles (including the Champions League three times).

But even then, the club was already making a name for itself. In our SCM history , this era is depicted by Hans-Jürgen “Bubi” Wende, among others. He was present at the premiere match of the GDR field handball selection on 29.05.1950 against Hungary, later captain of the national team and became field handball world champion in 1959. The Magdeburg native was active as a player and later coach and honorary president at SCM and was the first to be inducted into the “Hall of Fame” of the Bördelandhalle.