February 2025 BAYERN FAMILY recounted. He soon became a member of the club, where he met some of his later comrades-in-arms and co-signatories of FC Bayern‘ s founding charter. Were Wilhelm Hirsch, August Evers and the man who may be called Erich Gottschalk also among the MTV members of that time? To find out, Werner Klotz joins the‘ 51’ reporter in MTV‘ s small archive room and opens boxes full of old documents. The grey-haired, smiling 81-year-old Werner Klotz is a volunteer archivist for the club, which has its headquarters in a large old building near Goetheplatz. Part of the complex was destroyed during the war – and later rebuilt with gyms, a fencing centre and a boxing cellar. However, the historical membership lists
” Many membership lists and documents were lost due to the passing of time and the two wars”
Dr Michael Stephan, former city archivist
Difficult search: The membership lists of MTV, from which FCB split off, were lost during the war.
have been irretrievably lost.“ So we can only look for the gentlemen in old anniversary publications or club announcements,“ says Klotz,“ or in old pub newspapers”, satirical publications that clubs used to produce for special occasions. So we get started, leafing through yellowed paper, searching through the rows of text for the names Hirsch, Evers, Gottschalk – without success. But what we do find is an article in an MTV pub newspaper, which most likely appeared shortly after FC Bayern was founded. It pokes fun at the fact that many players of the young FC Bayern were not Bavarians at all. The headline of the article:“ Die’ Bayern’“( The’ Bavarians’).“ Zuagroaste“( new residents) were not uncommon in Munich at the end of the 19th century. Only around a third of the 500,000 or so people living in the city in 1900 were born there. Anyone living or moving into the city at that time was recorded in so-called“ police registration forms“. So, shouldn‘ t the three gentlemen Hirsch, Evers and“ Gottschalk“ also be on the forms from back then?
FC Bayern Magazine 121