Neuendorf is black and yellow at heart, but that only applies to football. He saw a number of games at the old Tivoli, suffered and celebrated with his Alemannia from Aachen.
Politically, however, Neuendorf, who was born in Düren in 1961, is a Red. Neither Willy Brandt nor Helmut Schmidt brought him to the SPD. “I’m a career changer”he says, “I didn’t do the tour through the Jusos.”
Next door to Grindel
Bernd Neuendorf, married with two children, made the tour of the tulip field in Bonn. This is the name of a building complex in the former federal capital. The federal press conference and the offices of the political correspondents in the capital were also located there.
“On a Hallway, Door to Door”according to former DFB President Reinhard Grindel, he worked alongside Neuendorf in the early 1990s: “We understood each other.”
His clients had, among other things, that “Flensburg daily newspaper”in fierce competition with those of Neuendorf, in this case the “Kiel News”. Politically, they were not on the same wavelength during the turbulent times after reunification. Grindel is a Christian Democrat, Neuendorf a Social Democrat who, by his own admission “completely unexpected” got into politics.
However, he remained in Bonn until 1999, after which he moved to Halle to become the editor-in-chief of the “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung”. His network had grown in all the years since the traineeship he started at the Reuters news agency in 1989, which is probably why a call came from the Willy Brandt building in 2003, which initiated the change of sides.
Neuendorf became spokesman for the party executive SPD in Berlin. At that time, Gerhard Schröder was chairman of the SPD, and also Chancellor. Almost two hours before Neuendorf was elected president of the DFB, the association revoked the honorary membership of the former chancellor because of his closeness to Russia and his friendship with Vladimir Putin. Neuendorf had previously spoken out clearly against his former boss.
After only a brief stint as board spokesman, Neuendorf returned to the West in 2004. He became press spokesman for the North Rhine-Westphalian Social Democrats, later state manager of the party in Düsseldorf, and then state secretary in 2012.
Studies in Bonn and Oxford
When Neuendorf started his career after studying modern history, political science and sociology in Bonn and Oxford, he was playing football at FC Grenzwacht Hürtgen (“I’m still a proud member today.”) already behind. A serious knee injury forced him to retire from the juniors: “But I kept getting interested in everything.”
First of all, he is in the 1970s “like all” enthusiastic about Borussia Mönchengladbach and the “foal elf” been, but when he was then for the first time at the Aachen Tivoli, “was it over me”.
Bernd Neuendorf will now be able to watch his favorite club’s games even less frequently. Perhaps he will at least take the large photo with him to the DFB headquarters in Frankfurt, which hangs in his office at the Mittelrhein Football Association. It shows a cheering Alemannia team in black and white
On the Main, the new president will face a variety of tasks and major problems. The image of the DFB could hardly be worse after many scandals.
Neuendorf is less interested in education. He wants to look ahead. “Football must assume its social and political responsibility again,” he said in Bonn. “Access to politics” should also be improved again. Old contacts should help.