Lutz Eigendorf

Lutz Eigendorf

Eigendorf (left) playing for Dynamo in 1975
Personal information
Date of birth	(1956-07-16)16 July 1956
Place of birth	Brandenburg, East Germany
Date of death
Place of death	Braunschweig, West Germany
Height
Position(s)	Midfielder
Youth career
0000–1970	Motor Süd Brandenburg
1970–1974	BFC Dynamo
Senior career*
Years	Team	Apps	(Gls)
1974–1979	BFC Dynamo	100	(7)
1980–1982	1. FC Kaiserslautern	53	(7)
1982–1983	Eintracht Braunschweig	8	(2)
International career
1978–1979	East Germany	6	(3)
*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Lutz Eigendorf (16 July 1956 – 7 March 1983) was a German football player.

GDR career

The talented Eigendorf played for East German side BFC Dynamo.

International career

He made his debut for the GDR in an August 1978 match against Bulgaria, immediately scoring his first two goals in a 2–2 draw. He went on to collect six caps, scoring three goals. His final international was a February 1979 friendly match against Iraq.

Defection to the West

On 20 March 1979, after a friendship match between Dynamo and West German club 1. FC Kaiserslautern, the Dynamo team made a stop in Gießen on their return trip to Berlin. Eigendorf managed to escape from the rest of the team, jumped into a taxi, and fled back to Kaiserslautern, thereby defecting to the west, hoping to play for the football team. But because of his defection he was banned from play for one year by UEFA and instead spent that time as a youth coach with the club.

This was not the first time an East German athlete had fled to the west, but it was a particularly embarrassing defection. Eigendorf's club Dynamo was under the patronage of the Stasi, East Germany's secretive state police, and subject to the personal attentions of the organisation's head, Erich Mielke. He ensured that the club's roster was made up of the country's best players, as well as arranging for the manipulation of matches in Dynamo's favour. After his defection Eigendorf openly criticised East Germany in the western media.

His wife Gabriele remained behind in Berlin with their daughter and was placed under constant police surveillance. Lawyers working for the Stasi quickly arranged a divorce and the former Frau Eigendorf remarried. Her new husband was eventually revealed as a Lothario – an agent of the state police whose role it was to spy on a suspect while romancing them.

Death under suspicious circumstances

In 1983 Eigendorf moved from Kaiserslautern to join Eintracht Braunschweig, all the while under the scrutiny of the Stasi who employed a number of West Germans as informants. On 5 March that year he was badly injured in a suspicious traffic accident in which he had driven his car into a tree. Apparently, a large truck had blinded him by turning on its main headlights just as Eigendorf was approaching a curve. He died at the hospital within two days. An autopsy indicated a high blood alcohol level despite the testimony of people he had met with that evening indicating that Eigendorf had only drunk a small amount of beer.

Murder confirmed

After German re-unification and the subsequent opening of the files of the former East Germany's state security service it was revealed that the traffic accident had been an assassination attempt orchestrated by the Stasi, confirming the longtime suspicions held by many. A summary report of the events surrounding Eigendorf's death was made on German television on 22 March 2000 which detailed an investigation by Heribert Schwan in the documentary "Tod dem Verräter" ("Death to the Traitor").

On 10 February 2010, a former East German spy revealed the Stasi ordered him to kill Eigendorf, which he claimed not to have done.

External links

• The curious case of Lutz Eigendorf – Part 1 – writer: Uli Hesse, from ESPN Soccernet
• The curious case of Lutz Eigendorf – Part 2 – writer: Uli Hesse, from ESPN Soccernet
• In memoriam Lutz Eigendorf (Italian)
• Lutz Eigendorf at National-Football-Teams.com

See also

• List of Eastern Bloc defectors