When the game begins after a delay – hundreds are still waiting outside to be let in – the Bayer 04 team, made fit by the athletics coach Bert Sumser, are first out of the blocks and they go into half-time with a 9-5 lead. That is increased to 14-6 and the game ends with a convincing 15-8 win. The team do a lap of honour at the stadium and celebrate being champions of Germany with the fans.
Thousans of fans celebrate their field handball players
The team arrives at the town hall at 21.30 CET in the evening and they are enthusiastically received by 6,000 Leverkusen supporters including the mayor Wilhelm Dopatka who greets the team with the following words: "The whole city is proud of you." The team travels through the streets of Wiesdorf in a bedecked vehicle. There are big celebrations in the mirrored hall the of Schloss Morsbroich. The pubs in Leverkusen are also rocking. They are celebrating their heroes: Goalkeeper Willi Stoffel, who was helping out the football players a few weeks before, albeit as a training keeper, Werner Tiemann, Robert Will, Rolf Särchinger, Manfred Boll, Hans Wübbe, Werner Horchler, Kurt Kösters, August Schiefer, Günther Lingelbach and Volkmar Weber.
The field handball players succeed in reaching the German championship final again in 1959 but end up losing narrowly 10-9 to TuS Lintfort and two years later they reach the semi-finals. For over ten years, our field handball players made their city enthusiastic Sunday after Sunday. And the field handball players of TuS 04 Leverkusen ensure with their promotion to the Middle Rhine Oberliga in 1956 that the stronghold of German handball is in Leverkusen.
"But one thing, one thing will remain the same, Bayer 04 will never go under!"
