The brothers Karl and Richard van Frank played several games for the first team in the 1930/31 season – Karl as a defender, Richard as a left winger. The Sportvereinigung Leverkusen 04, as Bayer 04 was called back then, were promoted to the top district league at the end of that season, dominated it in the following years and were promoted to the Lower Rhine district league in 1936 as Bayer 04 Leverkusen. The names of the two brothers again and again appear in the Werkself team lists as Frank I (Karl) and Frank II (Richard). Their father Samuel van Frank owns the two cinemas in Leverkusen, ‘Tonbild’ and ‘Nationaltheater. When he has to hand over the 'Tonbild' at the end of 1933 the new owner interestingly is the brother of the National Socialist MP Josef Wipperfürth.
In the summer of 1935, Samuel van Frank wants to show one of the first Nazi propaganda films ‘Der junge und der alte König’ (The Young and the Old King) in his ‘Nationaltheater’ but the local NSDAP party bosses incite a storm of indignation that culminates in further repressive measures. And his sons Karl and Richard again and again are missing from the Werkself line-ups. The last match reports in October and November 1936 often report a "bad" left winger who should be replaced but Richard is never mentioned by name again. It could be that Richard van Frank did not play again but the journalistic criticism would fit with the times back then.
The family van Frank give up on 26 November 1936. They move to Holland and are hidden by a Dutch family and thereby avoid deportation to a concentration camp. After the end of the war, the brothers follow the traditional career of their father and open two cinemas in Haarlem (Richard) and Beverwijk (Karl).
Hans Sarpei was born on 28 June 1976 in Tema, Ghana, and came to Germany with his parents at the age of three, where he grew up in Cologne. Even before he was born, his mother and father worked in Hamburg in the import-export sector. There they met an older man who introduced them to German culture and supported them. Out of gratitude, Hans was later given his first name, although this man died before he was born. Hans comes from a sporting family; his older brother Edward and his nephews Hans Nunoo Sarpei and Kingsley Sarpei were or are also professional footballers.
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On 3 June 1953, Hans-Josef (‘Sepp’) Kretschmann became the fifth coach in the history of Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Born in Allenstein, East Prussia, on 21 March 1902, the football coach first studied to become a teacher before later switching to football. He took over the Werkself from Franz Strehle, under whom the team twice managed to stay in the 1st Oberliga West. However, Strehle did not extend his contract in Leverkusen after these two very successful years.
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After promotion to Bundesliga North 2 in the summer of 1975, Bayer 04 are fighting relegation just eight months later. The club expects full commitment from everyone in this precarious situation. Promotion coach Manfred Rummel is to give up his main job as a teacher at the Mülheim special school and become a full-time coach at Bayer 04. The coach, who is very popular with the team, does not see himself in a position to fulfil the club's request. Despite a 2-0 home win against SpVgg Erkenschwick, Manfred Rummel is put on gardening leave by "mutual agreement".
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Bayer 04, already been promoted to the 1st Oberliga West, played friendly after friendly in the second half of May 1951. And that continued throughout the following month.
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Jacek Krzynowek was born on 15 May 1976 in Kamiensk, Poland, and grew up as a typical country boy. He spent his childhood less in structured training sessions and more on simple pitches, where he spent hours playing football with older boys. He realised early on that he had exceptional shooting power and enormous stamina. But for a long time, he didn't appreciate just how much talent he had. While others dream of a great career, professional football initially seems like a distant world to him that he only knows from television.
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