Walter Rositzky (16 March 1889 – 26 May 1953) was a German

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

who played as a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

forward Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward. Forward may also refer to: People * Forward (surname) Sports * Forward (association football) * Forward (basketball), including: ** Point forward ** Power forward (basketball) ** Sm ...

. He played for

FC Barcelona Futbol Club Barcelona (), commonly referred to as Barcelona and colloquially known as Barça (), is a professional Football team, football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, that competes in La Liga, the top flight of Spanish footb ...

and

Real Madrid Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (, meaning ''Royal Madrid Football Club''), commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid. Founded in 1902 as Madrid Football Club, the club has traditionally wor ...

Club career

Rositzky was born in

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

, Germany. "Rositzky", as it appears in his German military record Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Abt. Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, 456 E Nr. 9851, was a

and right winger. He played for

in from 1911 to 1913 before leaving it to play for Real Madrid. Rositzky was the fifth player in history who left the Catalans for Madrid. In the shirt of the Blaugrana he played 55 games and scored 5 goals, won the club championship of Catalonia, and won twice the

King's Cup __NOTOC__ King's Cup (incl. translations), may refer to: Sports Football * Copa del Rey, Spanish for "King's Cup," the main national knockout tournament in men's football * King Cup (sometimes named King's Cup), Saudi Arabian men's football nat ...

and the

Pyrenees Cup The Pyrenees Cup (), officially Challenge International du Sud de la France, was an international football competition contested by Spanish and French clubs based in the territories of Pyrénées (Catalonia, the Basque Country, Languedoc, Midi-P ...

. He remained in Madrid until 1915, when the outbreak of

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

suspended his career. He left Spain, was drafted into the German army and never returned to the Iberian Peninsula, locating himself in his native town of

in 1920. Rositzky was engaged in trade and owned a margarine company. He survived World War II and ran a grocery shop at 54 Rotbuchenstieg between 1949 and 1952. There is no documentation that he had a wife or children. Walter Rositzky died on 26 May 1953 in Hamburg.

International affiliation

During the time in which he played professionally, he was commonly misspelled as "Rozitsky" and referred to be born in Poland, despite it was not a sovereign nation. At the

Estadio Santiago Bernabéu A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...

in the gallery of all the Real Madrid players, he was also inscribed as a ''Polonia'' player (meaning Polish). Not the first Pole playing for the club, but the first German, took pride at being placed next to

Santiago Bernabéu Yeste Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

, with whom he performed on the same team.

References

German men's footballers 1889 births 1953 deaths Footballers from Hamburg Men's association football midfielders Men's association football wingers Men's association football forwards German expatriate men's footballers German expatriate sportspeople in Spain Expatriate men's footballers in Spain FC Barcelona players Real Madrid CF players {{Germany-footy-bio-stub