Relaxed session at the Werkself:

Seven players from the former GDR were in the squad of coach Dragoslav Stepanovic in the 1994/95 Bundesliga season. Five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bayer 04 had a strong representation from the East. Were groups formed, was there East–West thinking or did that not matter any more? In the sixth and final part of our series '30 years of reunification', Jens Melzig and René Rydlewicz – two of the glorious seven – recall culture shocks, regulars' tables and a legendary match.

His move to Leverkusen in the summer of 1990 went under the radar in the mass media. The attraction of the transfers of GDR stars Andy Thom and Ulf Kirsten was too great. Who would be interested in a 17-year-old youth player? At the same time, René Rydlewicz – like Thom – was signed from BFC Dynamo from Berlin. There he was the youngest GDR Oberliga player of all time as a 16-year-old in March 1990. With special permission of the DFV, the GDR Football Association, the big youth talent was allowed to make his debut in East Germany’s top flight in a 1-1 draw with Energie Cottbus. A powerful central defender also played against the opponents from Lower Lusatia: Jens Melzig, who became a teammate of Rydlewicz at Bayer 04 three years later.

René does not have the fondest memories of his first months in Leverkusen. “I felt quite alone and waited a whole day in my room until it was finally six o’clock. That’s when the U19 training sessions started on a shale pitch behind the Haberland Stadium.” His coach was Michael Reschke, who was later general manager at Bayer 04 and is now technical director at Schalke 04. René had a small flat on Franz-Hitze-Straße in the immediate vicinity of the stadium. But his days lacked the structure he was used to from his time at the sports school in the GDR. “I went there at eight in the morning for school lessons, had training, lessons again, training again and then I came back to my room at seven or half seven and shortly after that went to bed as I was so tired. Now I had to structure the whole day myself and I found that very difficult at the age of 17.”

Family connection at the Kirstens

Jürgen Seidel, support worker and kit man with the youth teams at the time, took the young new signing under his wing. He did things with him, for example going out to eat. But René only really felt at home in the West when he started commercial training at Sporthaus Forst in Quettingen and moved into a granny flat at Ulf Kirsten’s home. “Ulf’s wife Diana cooked for me, did my washing, and occasionally tidied my room,” he recounted. “That was the family connection I needed and it did me good.” Nevertheless: The high standard of living, his own improved financial situation and consumption opportunities in the West irritated the youngster from the Lausitz. “It was really a sort of culture shock for me. Of course, Ulf and Andy, who were long established stars in the GDR and earned a lot relatively, definitely didn’t experience the change as starkly. But for me as a teenager it was like a different world.”  

A world that soon became more familiar to him. After a year with the U19s, René trained with the first-team. The midfielder made his debut in the Bundesliga for the Werkself in a 1-1 draw with Saarbrücken in August 1992. In the meantime, Heiko Scholz and Mario Tolkmitt were two other ‘Ossis’ who signed for Leverkusen. The East German faction in the squad was now up to five. A year later saw the arrival of Jens Melzig, Jörg Nowotny and goalkeeping coach Werner Friese, with Mike Rietpietsch joining in 1994. All four were also from the GDR. The Bayer 04 team photo at the start of the 1994/95 campaign included nine men with an East German past – that was nearly one third of the squad.

René Rydlewicz laughed and said: “Actually you should also count Lupescu and Pavel Hapal as Ossis from Romania and the Czech Republic and then it will be eleven.” Although, Jörg Nowotny only signed from FC Saarbrücken before the start of the season. Whatever: No other Bundesliga club had such a high number of players from the East. Was that evidence somehow? Was there such a thing as East versus West thinking four years after reunification? Did that play a role? Were groups formed?

“A really great group”

“No, definitely not with us,” said Rydlewicz, “nationality and the question of where you come from don’t have any role in football. It was only important that you are a decent bloke and were able to deliver as a football player.” The atmosphere within the team was outstanding.

Jens ‘Melle’ Melzig can only confirm that. “We were a really great group and had a fantastic relationship with each other. Of course, the players who knew each other from the East – like Ulf, Keule (Andreas Thom), Scholle (Heiko Scholz) and I –, often did things together. But nearly everybody from the team were there at our meals after games or the Monday regulars’ table. Including Bernd Schuster and Rudi Völler. Nobody had a wall in their head.”

In public: reserved response from West Germans

Away from the team, the experience was different. Above all in the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Melzig perceived a reserved response, contempt and arrogance amongst the West Germans. “Sometimes you encountered a sympathetic, questioning look according to the motto: Does the sun actually shine where you come from? And you would most like to have answered: No, it’s always dark where we come from.”

The difference in mentality is still evident today. Melzig is a sports teacher with the Brandenburg Football Association with his duties include looking after the U15 to U18 teams in the state. “When I travel to tournaments with my lads and there are teams from the west then they may play with more confidence. And sometimes they really shout their mouths off,” said Melle, a friend of speaking frankly.

When he arrived at Leverkusen from Dresden in 1993, he already had two years of Bundesliga experience with Dynamo and was obviously able to defend himself against any impertinence and stupid Ossi jokes. Melle was solid, a hard and physical defender. A kind-hearted, nice guy but on the pitch he had a humour bypass when it got down to the nitty-gritty. “If anyone was daft with me back then,” he said in a Berlin dialect, “then I’d have knocked him down.” He would have done it but didn’t have to.

Beer in a test tube

Everything went well in Leverkusen. He had no problem settling in and went straight into the first team. For him, the 27-year-old established player, who came to Leverkusen with his wife and children, the situation was different from that of René Rydlewicz three years before. “I had it easier than he did. For me, it was a job at Bayer 04 like at Dresden – with the difference that you were just aiming for higher sporting targets.” The temptation of capitalism has left him pretty cold since then.

But there were differences that bothered him and, yes, also produced a small culture shock. As with his first visit to the ‘Kölner Hof’, one of the bars in Opladen frequented by players from Bayer 04. When Pit, mine host, presented him with a freshly pulled Kölsch at the bar, the newcomer from Cottbus stared in amazement: “I’d never drunk beer from a test tube before. In the East, we were used to decent half-litre glasses full of tasty Radeberger.” But Melle quickly got used to that readjustment. Back then, large parts of the squad – away from the training ground – used to like nurturing their German-German relationship in the Kölner Hof. Today that would be called proactive team building. The initiative was usually taken by the Ossis back then.

Melle, the self-made man

They were all mates, the lads from Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony who played for Bayer 04. But none of them had an informal and down-to-earth presence like Jens Melzig. The man from the Lausitz embodied the self-made man like nobody else. As Melle understood his craft and not just on the pitch. If he wanted to build a house again today then he could do it alone from the foundations to the roof, says the 55-year-old today – and without a hint of bragging in his voice. He can do it. Bricklaying, tiling floors, plastering – he learned it from scratch as a qualified builder in a civil engineering combine.

In terms of interpersonal relationships in this team of 1994/95 – fully in tune with Willy Brandt – everything had come together that belonged together. And the chemistry was right and not just within the team. Ulf, Keule, Melle and Scholle were fan favourites because they not only delivered on the pitch but also looked to get close to the fans. And the younger ones like René Rydlewicz, Mike Rietpietsch and Mario Tolkmitt were also in the good books of the fans.

Goalkeeping coach Werner Friese

Working in the background was a man who experienced an historic achievement in football with the GDR: Werner Friese was the third choice keeper for the German Democratic Republic at the 1974 World Cup and was at the 1-0 victory for East Germany against West Germany in Hamburg. Friese, who was mostly between the sticks at Lokomotive Leipzig as a player, became the goalkeeping coach at Bayer 04 in 1993. “He was the first full-time goalkeeping coach we ever had,” explained Rüdiger Vollborn. “Werner and I got on very well but it wasn’t an easy situation for either of us. He was supposed to work on the mistakes that Stepi believed he’d identified in me. At the time,Werner was caught between two stools.” Friese spent eight years at Leverkusen. He died in 2016 at the age of 70.

As harmonious as it was within the team in 1994/95: There was less success on the pitch in the league. The season ended with a seventh-place finish and no qualification for Europe. But the group did show what they were capable of – as in a 3-0 win at Dortmund the 2-0 victory against Bayern – sporadically. In the DFB Cup, the end came in the second round after the record 11-0 victory at BSV Brandenburg with Paulo Sergio scoring five goals. Bayer 04 went out on penalties at 1860 München.

No chance for Ronaldo and a grappa with Stepi

But there was still the UEFA Cup. Here the team under coach Dragoslav Stepanovic caused a stir. The opening game at home at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium produced a spectacular performance with two East Germans and a Brazilian centre stage. Ulf Kirsten scored a hat-trick in a breathtaking 5-4 win against PSV Eindhoven. Ronaldo, then only known to genuine experts and the wider world of football, also demonstrated his great ability on the European stage with three goals – and he made his opposite number look pretty old. Jens Melzig is not happy to remember the first leg: “I just couldn’t get a grip on Ronaldo. I was substituted a couple of minutes after his third goal. It was not a great day for me.”

Melle could hardly wait for the second leg as he wanted to show what he could do with the Brazilian the one time. But ‘Stepi’ wasn’t sure. “I thought it was great that the team stood up for me when it was about the line-up,” said Melle. He then played the game of his life in Eindhoven. Ronaldo had no chance against him and Bayer 04 went through to the next round with a goalless draw. “It was simply brilliant,” said Melzig. “Stepi was so relaxed afterwards and celebrated the win with us at an Italian. It went late into the night and we two were the last ones at the bar drinking another grappa.“

Dream of a second UEFA Cup final

And it continued to go well in the UEFA Cup. Honved (5-0, 2-0), GKS Katowice (4-0, 4-1) and FC Nantes (5-1, 0-0) were easily knocked out. Of the 25 goals up to the semi-final, former GDR players scored 13. Ulf Kirsten netted ten and Mario Tolkmitt, Andy Thom and Heiko Scholz chipped in with one apiece. René Rydlewicz was playing for 1860 Munich at the time as Bayer 04 loaned him out for 18 months in November 1994. A lot of Bayer 04 fans dreamt of going through to a second UEFA Cup final following on from 1988. But a 2-1 home defeat against AC Parma and the 4-2 defeat at VfB Stuttgart before that not only provided a big wake-up call. The management called it quits, parting company with Stepanovic and bringing in Erich Ribbeck as his successor.

The change of coaches proved to be a problem for Jens Melzig. Just as he was about to sign a new contract, Ribbeck informed him that he didn’t feature in his plans for the starting eleven. Melle didn’t understand the world any more. “Ribbeck wanted to play Bernd Schuster as a sweeper and, as a central defender and backup for Bernd, I was too slow for him all of a sudden. I saw it differently. I don’t know whether my decision not to sign was good back then. Perhaps I should have signed the extension. Could have, should have. It is what it is.” That answer is typical of Melzig. He was never a tactician.

Back to the East

In the summer of 1995 he went back to the eastern part of Germany, to Chemnitzer FC in the second division and thereby taking a big cut in wages. But he was playing. A year later, the now 31-year-old joined his hometown and beloved club Energie Cottbus in the Regional League North-East, regained promotion to the second division under Eduard Geyer, made it to the 1977 DFB Cup final with Cottbus as a Regional League side against VfB Stuttgart (0-2) and ended his career at the age of 34 at Tennis Borussia Berlin.

Jens Melzig, like his former teammate René Rydlewicz, is again living in Cottbus. Like Melzig, Rydlewicz is also working in football again at an assistant coach with the Germany U18s. And he is still in contact with Leverkusen. He had his most successful time here under Christoph Daum and he made a total of 27 Bundesliga appearances for the Black and Reds in 1996/97. After playing for Bielefeld, the midfielder found a home at FC Hansa Rostock. Rydlewicz played his last Bundesliga match for Rostock in May 2008. The opponents were Bayer 04.

Rydlewicz plays the occasional game for the Leverkusen Veterans. And, in the future, he will again be back at the BayArena or the Haberland Stadium. Striker Emre Gedikli is a promising Bayer 04 talent in his U18 national team.

The former GDR players in the 1994/95 season:

• Andreas Thom (came from BFC Dynamo):
  At Bayer 04 from 1989-1995, 161 Bundesliga games, 37 goals

• Ulf Kirsten (Dynamo Dresden):
  1990-2003, 350 Bundesliga games, 182 goals

• René Rydlewicz (BFC Dynamo):
  1990-1997 (from 1994 to 1996 on loan at 1860 Munich), 43 Bundesliga games, 3 goals

• Heiko Scholz (Dynamo Dresden):
  1992-1995, 75 Bundesliga games, 5 goals

• Mario Tolkmitt (BFC Dynamo):
  1992-1997, 55 Bundesliga games, 0 goals

• Jens Melzig (Dynamo Dresden):
  1993-1995, 40 Bundesliga games, 0 goals

• Mike Rietpietsch (FC Union Berlin):
  1994-1997, 22 Bundesliga games, 0 goals

Click here for other parts of the series:
Part 1: 30 years of reunification – A lucky break for Bayer 04
Part 2: 'Scholle's' game for the history books
Part 3: Reiner Calmund: "I had tears in my eyes"
Part 4: Falko Götz: "Very happy the move proved to be a success"
Part 5: Mike Rietpietsch: Punk music, privileges and Karlsbader sandwiches