THE GERMAN EIGTH CILINDER

Teddy, for friends, one of the greatest pistards of the 1930s. He was born in Cologne in 1912 as Albert Richter, in the Ehrenfeld district. The father is a craftsman and teaches his children the work of producing religious-themed plaster statues. He is also a music lover, so Albert learns to play the violin, while the other two children learn to play the saxophone and the clarinet. The job didn't go very well, Albert adapts to do the apprentice, but in his spare time, he develops his passion for cycling. Cologne was the center of track activity in Germany: Albert will soon be named as the Ehrenfeld cannon.

Poorly seen activity by his father, particularly after a fall that cost him a broken rib. Noted by a former runner, excellent manager and trainer of athletes Ernst Berliner, who had started to be an upholsterer after the First World War, he began his ascent in the world of cycling. The bond between Albert and Ernst will never be broken, even though the latter is a Jew and therefore poorly viewed by the regime. While qualifying for the 1932 Olympics, having won the Grand Prix de Paris, he did not participate with the excuse that the federation had no money. In the same year, he won the amateur world championship in Rome.

"I can say with certainty that Albert was anti-Nazi. If he had complied with Nazism, everything would have been much easier for him, and to his advantage. But Albert chose another path. "

Sepp Dinkelkamp, Swiss cyclist

And on September 3, 1932, despite some setbacks in his preparation, Albert Richter became world champion at amateur speed, like Mathias Engel in 1927. The celebrations were at the peak of the exploit and Richter was greeted with triumph in Cologne by the crowd jubilant.

In 1933 Hitler came to power, Berliner moved the family to the Netherlands and Albert became a professional to help the family: for 7 years in a row, he won the German championship and placed second or third at the world championships. He will always refuse to wear the new German swastika shirt and salute the Nazis. He is coaxed several times to do espionage activities, but he will never lend himself to reporting his friends. He runs mainly abroad in Holland and France where he learns the language. you earn the new nickname: the German eight-cylinder. Together with the Belgian cut Jef and the French Louis Gérardin with whom he judges a close friendship, they were known as the "three musketeers" known.

"There have been races throughout the year on the four vélodromes in Paris. Richter quickly learned French in particular by watching movies and quickly adapting to his new life. After an uncertain start, the young German triumphed at the Vélodrome d'hiver by winning a competition for foreign sprinters. His fluid, dynamic and powerful style earned him the admiration of all. Adopted in a few months by the Parisian public, Albert Richter became very popular in France and acquired a new nickname: the German eight-cylinder."

Chany, Pierre (1988), La Fabuleuse Histoire du Cyclisme, Nathan, France, p425

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Vélodrome d'hiver

In July 1942, the French police, acting on the orders of the German authorities of occupied Paris, used the velodrome to contain thousands of Jews and others who were victims of a mass arrest. The Jews were detained at the velodrome before being transferred to a concentration camp in the Parisian suburbs of Drancy and then in the Auschwitz death camp. The incident became known as "Vel 'd'Hiv Roundup" (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv). Of the 28,000 arrested, only 400 were saved.

By Djampa - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7338028
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When the war broke out he refused to enlist: he would not fight his friends. Which year later the greatest sportsman of all time (according to the undersigned) said: "I don't shoot on my friends", in different times and contexts, he remembers the refusal of Muhammad Ali to call for the Vietnam war.

When the war broke out he was in Milan, he made a mistake I went back to Germany for the national championship, which he won, in the largest sports center in the world, Deuschtlandhalle in Berlin, built by Hitlr in 1935.

In preparing the final escape by train, he took his bike with him where 12700 savings marks of a friendly Jewish family were hidden. He was in the company of two other runners, but the police went without fail and found the money. He was arrested on December 9th (rumors that he had been betrayed by two beating regular cyclists never found confirmation).

On December 31, 1939, the newspapers of the Nazi regime published a news story: "Intercepted a smuggler who hid 13,000 stolen marks in his bicycle". On January 2 the Gestapo declared that it had committed suicide in shame. In reality, a declaration of convenience was shot and issued. Nazi propaganda tried to pass it off as a thief and to diminish and forget the victories: all the trophies, posters or anything that reminded the "Aryan who hated the Nazis" were destroyed. When one of his brothers tried to see him on January 2, Richter's body was shown in the hospital morgue or, according to some reports, he fell into a cell. He was bloody and his suit full of holes. Berliner tried to find out the truth after the war, but was unsuccessful. His death was not formally recorded. The German cycling federation has declared: "His name has been erased from our ranks, from our memories, forever". His funerals, although silent, were filled with people from his neighborhood.

Only the tenacity of his old Jewish friend Berliner, who had meanwhile moved from the Netherlands to the United States, restored the truth. Berliner also had difficulties, as in 1966, when he succeeded in opening a judicial inquiry that the German judiciary however closed just a year later. In communist Germany, however, he was remembered as an anti-Nazi hero enough to even dedicate a stamp to him in the 1960s. Only in the 1990s did Albert Richter reappear in the annals of German cycling.

As the gestapo knew to strike without fail. The names of two runners Steffes and Miethe were made, the latter being a professional informant through the cochlistic federation.

In the documentary, made by Raimund Weber and cameraman Tillmann Scholl in 1990, Auf der Suche nach Albert Richter ("In search of Albert Richter"), Steffes' wife jumped on a question asked by her husband and called Berliner "ein Schweinehund" = hot dog/pig

Von Nicola in der Wikipedia auf Deutsch - selbst fotografiert, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17812605

By © Raimond Spekking / CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61153716

Achievements
Grand Prix de Paris 1932, 1934, 1938
1932 amateur sprint world champion
German sprint champion 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939
UCI Grand Prize, 1934
Grand Prix de la République, 1934
Grand Prix de Berlin 1939
Silver Medal UCI Track Cycling World Championships - Men's Sprint 1934, 1935
Bronze medal UCI Track Cycling World Championships - Men's Sprint 1933, 1936, 1937, 1938

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Berliner_(Radsportmanager)

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepp_Dinkelkamp
Der vergessene Weltmeister. Das rätselhafte Schicksal des Radrennfahrers Albert Richter. 1998 (Emons Verlag) und 2007 (Covadonga Verlag), ISBN 978-3-936973-34-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Richter
http://www.velochronique.com/chroniques/retrospectives/albert-richter/article/janvier-1940-la-gestapo-suicide-392