In 1978, a new path was taken under the new manager Werner Westerhaus. With the spectacular capture of Germany’s record international Herbert Lübking handball in Lemgo was given a decisive boost.

When Lübking who initially was employed to be coach, took to the court himself in 1979/80, the Oberliga title became a realistic objective. At the same time of this sporting upturn, the club moved from their small Heldmanskamp Arena to the District Sports Hall in Lüttfeld. The Regional Division is just an intermediary station on the way to higher climes.

Promotion to the newly-formed Second Bundesliga was achieved in 1981/82. Only with winning the last match of the season in Berlin the team was able to maintain its Second Bundesliga status. That was to be the last game under Herbert Lübking before the inexperienced Minden postman Hotti Bredemeier took control for the first time. It turned out to be a stroke of luck from the manager Jürgen Kuchenbecker who had been in charge of club affairs since 1980 and had pushed forward a swift development. Second place in the Northern Second Bundesliga in 1982/83 earned Lemgo two play-off games against TuS Griesheim for a place in the Bundesliga. They won the first match 19-18 to close in on a place in the top flight.

With the finishing post within their sights, Harke, von Boenigk and Mannen acted lame one week later. As they trailed TuS Griesheim on May 14, 1983 by 13-7, the Lüttfeld witnessed one of the greatest ever recoveries.

Carried fore by a wave of euphoria, TBV Lemgo turned the game 18-16 in their favour and sealed their place in the highest level of the game in Germany.

The first coach of the club in the Bundesliga was a real home-grown talent. Ulrich Schönbrodt was always going to be measured against Horst Bredemeier, who had reluctantly moved to Düsseldorf. In February 1984, Schönbrodt was replaced by Hennes Sulk. However, relegation could only be avoided due to the ‘Klempel Affair’ and the resultant enforced relegation of Göppingen.

The 1984/85 season will always be remembered as the year of Sigurdur Sveinsson. The Icelander rose to the top of the scoring charts with 191 goals. Since TBV Lemgo simply could not find their game away from home, relegation was a real issue again. A frustrated Hennes Sulk threw in the towel shortly before the end of the season and Hotti Bredemeier took “remote control” of the club by preparing the team for the last few games from his base in Düsseldorf.

The miracle became reality and, with a 25-20 win on the final day of the season at SG Weiche-Handewitt, Lemgo clinched their first away win in two years and were able to avoid the drop all by themselves. However, the panic was not yet over.

Under motivation coach Gunter D. Klein, a lecturer at the Sport’s Academy of Cologne, TBV Lemgo was shaken by two major events in the 1985/86 season. Goal scorer Sveinsson suffered from a torn cruciate ligament in the fifth game of the season in Gummersbach and Jens Buscher, a hugely talented circle runner, was killed in a car accident. In the end, Lemgo were satisfied with tenth place.

The 1986/87 season finished with an improvement of one position. The following two years are synonymous with Wolfgang Herz, the assistant of Günter D. Klein who had left for Dortmund.

Although he was officially nothing more than a caretaker-coach, he led the team in 1987/88 to safety following a disappointing spell under Walter Haase, and he was also successful in the same role in  the 1988/89 season after Vitomir Arsenijevic was fired. In 1989, Lajos Mocsai was appointed. The Handball professor from Budapest had just led the Hungarian national team to runners-up spot at the World Championships and he enhanced the status of handball in the region.

It was a continual rise and TBV Lemgo went straight into the play-offs in the 1989/90 season after finishing eighth. They were only beaten in overtime in the semi-finals against the eventual champion TV Grosswallstadt. The team, which was strengthened by the capture of Swiss World Championships top-scorer Marc Baumgartner and hot prospects from Rheinhausen Daniel Stephan and Achim Schürmann, finally lost their travel-sickness syndrome with seven wins on the road in the 1994/95 season, moving ever closer to the summit of the national game. Third place in the table was capped with the German Cup triumph. After the 24-18 win over HSV Düsseldorf, many Lemgo fans turned the Alsterdorfer Sports Hall in Hamburg into a party zone on April 2, 1995.

The cherry on top of finishing the 1995/96 season in third place was the first appearance in a European competition. With wins over Velenje, Volgograd and Kosice, TBV Lemgo stormed unbeaten into the semi-finals, where after a 25-23 first-leg win on March 30, 1996, they travelled to the cauldron of Bitola. Three seconds before the end, Frank Ziegler scored the decisive goal to make it 23-24, leaving 15,000 fans outside and 6,000 inside the fearsome Mladost Arena hugely disappointed.

For the first leg of the European Cup Winner’s Cup final, TBV Lemgo moved into the Bielefeld Seidensticker Arena on April 20, 1996. The 24-19 cushion, earned in front of 5,000 fans, was enough for the second leg. After the 25-26 at Teka Santander, more than 5,000 Lemgo fans gave the European Cup Winner’s Cup winners a rousing reception in the town’s market place.

After seven years at the helm, the time had come for Lajos Mocsai to say goodbye. The same applied to right-winger Frank Ziegler, who had personified the term reliability during his 14 years at the club. Chairman of the advisory council Paul-Gerhard Reimann and manager Dieter Schönbrodt struck gold with their choice of Mocsai’s replacement. The 36-year-old Belarusian Juri Schevzov celebrated a sensational debut and created a new starting record in the short history of the Bundesliga with a 32-2 points finish.

Photos and text by Jörg Hagemann (j.hagemann@lz-online.de)

The club presented its new coach Volker Mudrow. The experts were all shocked that TBV put their faith in a 33-year-old who had no previous Bundesliga experience but the doubters were soon put in their place. With a fantastic high-pace handball and the well-employed ‘quick approach’, Lemgo became German champions for the second time in their history with the record number of points of 62-6 in 2003.

They failed to take the European crown in the following years with Celje Pivovarna twice proving a bridge too far for Lemgo in the Champions League.

They only had to wait until 2006, though, before dramatic wins over VfL Gummersbach took TBV back into a European final after a decade’s absence. TBV won 30-29 in Göppingen to create the best conditions to win the return leg in front of their own fans. After a tough contest, Lemgo also won the return leg 25-22 and clinched the second European title in the club’s history.

Just four months after their first appearance in the Gerry Weber Stadium, TBV wrote handball history once again – and this time for eternity. 30,925 fans saw the start of the 2004/05 season against THW Kiel in the Arena AufSchalke, creating a new World Record for a club fixture. Only the 26-31 defeat spoiled the party from Lemgo’s point of view.