Sport Report History – January 13, 1900: Ice hockey legend Herbert Brück is born in Vienna

In the first third of the 1900s, Herbert Brück wrote Austrian ice hockey history together with his brother. Time for a look at his eventful life.

Herbert Brück was born in Vienna and grew up there. The first entry in the history is from the 1914/15 season when he took part in the “Vienna Ice Ball Championship” for the Vienna Ice Skating Club. It didn’t take long for successes to appear at the Austrian level. In 1923, 1924, 1926 and 1927 Herbert Brück won the Austrian ice hockey championship with the Vienna Ice Skating Club. In addition, he also played field hockey and came for the Vienna and the Wiener Athletiksport Club (WAC) in the field hockey championship. In 1927 Brück moved to Germany to the Berlin ice skating club and was also German champion in 1929. You were far away from professional sports at that time. In the German capital, the Viennese worked as a bank clerk and later also ran a car dealership. He also continued to play field hockey in Berlin. In 1936 Herbert Brück played for the German team at the 2nd Winter Maccabiade and in 1937 for Bar Kochba Berlin. There are statistics from 32 games (between 1925 and 1933). Herbert Brück scored eleven goals and 13 assists. With the Austrian national team, he won a gold medal (1927 European Championships), two silver medals (1925, 1932 European Championships) and two bronze medals (1926 European Championships, 1931 World Championships). At the 1933 World Cup, they ended up with a thankless fourth place. At the 1928 Olympics, it was sixth place in the final. For participating in international games, he received the “international badge” from the ice hockey association seven times.

There are two versions of the rest of his life that cannot be completely reified. Accordingly, Herbert Brück is said to have been interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp during the Second World War. After the liberation he is said to have emigrated to England and from there to the USA. According to other research results, Herbert Brück emigrated to the USA together with his brother in 1938. He worked as a ski and ice skating coach in the state of Nevada before relocating to Hawaii, where he worked as a real estate agent. There he died in 1974 under his new name Herbert Brook. The Viennese with Jewish roots accepted this when he moved to the USA.

01/13/2022