It was designed as a flashing sign: The circle is initially visible and then the letters in the cross are switched on. The whole thing is repeated after a blackout phase.
The Bayer Cross was switched off at the outbreak of war in 1939 due to the lighting regulations and was then dismantled. For the next 19 years there was darkness over the Works.
The Leverkusen landmark was illuminated again in its current form on 2 September 1958. It is somewhat smaller than its predecessor and does not flash any more. The diameter is now only 51 metres and it has a circumference of 160 metres.
A fan-based campaign to save our landmark was launched n 2007 after Bayer AG wanted to pull it down. Instead the company wanted to project the cross as digital illuminated advertising on the Bayer office tower block. 21,000 people signed up to keep the Bayer Cross where it is. I hope it will continue to shine for a long time.
Michal ‘Katsche’ Kadlec was born in the Czech town of Vyskov on 13 December 1984. At the age of six, he moved to the Pfalz region in Germany with his parents because his father Miroslav accepted an offer from FC Kaiserslautern where he played as a sweeper for the Red Devils for eight years. Katsche learned German in the kindergarten at Kaiserslautern. And he played football at an early age: first as a teenager at SV Alsenborn and then for FC Kaiserslautern.
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Helmut Röhrig was born in Leverkusen on 14.12.19 44. He learned to play football at Bayer 04 and became a Middle Rhine champion with the U19s in 1963 finishing ahead of FC Köln. He played in the second team at the Werkself in his first year in senior football.
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Bernd Schuster was born in Augsburg on 22.12.19 59. His first club as a teenager was local side SV Hammerschmiede. From that time there was an anecdote that a former groundsman told us when we had a Pokal game in Augsburg in 1993. Bernd was always the first person on the training ground after school. With a running track around the pitch and goals without nets, the young Bernd practised free kicks and corners in the knowledge that he had to collect the ball himself. In that way he not only practised his technique but also worked on his stamina as a teenager.
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Wolfgang ‘Wolle’ Rolff was born on 26.12.1959 in Lamstedt, a community in the Lower Saxony administrative district of Cuxhaven. He started his football career at TSV Lamstedt. He moved on to OSC Bremerhaven with the U17s as he trained to be a retail salesman. He started in senior football at the Nordsee Stadium in Bremerhaven.
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The 1969/70 season begins with four defeats for Bayer 04. That puts the team coached by Theo Kirchberg bottom of the table. The Werkself only lift themselves out of the relegation zone on Matchday 10 with a 4-2 away win in Marl-Hüls. The position in the table improves over the course of the season.
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