The full force of a headline hit the Blick readers on January 16, 1962: “ICE HOCKEY-DELNON AS COMMUNIST EXPOSED. Association throws him out as a national coach ». The decision to expel Reto Delnon († 59) was made by the Central Committee of the Ice Hockey Association only 19 days after he was hired.
“Delnon’s assurance that he was only a communist out of family tradition, but otherwise a completely apolitical person, was of no avail,” wrote Blick and asked: “How could a large Swiss sports association be a declared communist – who never made a secret of his convictions – appointed to a representative office? ” And scoffed: “It really seems that a skill was proceeded that roughly corresponds to the current skills of our national team!” Two months later, the national team rose to the World Cup in the USA with just one win from seven games under the Bern police officer Ernst Wenger in the B group.
“Can I not have my own opinion?”
Today, Nati coach Patrick Fischer’s party book would be worth a marginal note at most. At that time, Delnon’s membership of the Labor Party (PdA) was the reason for a political thriller. The Cold War was at its height after the Berlin Wall was built and months before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Anti-communism was booming in Switzerland. East trade and contacts were under attack. A few days before the Delnon scandal, for example, Aargau canton students protested after a performance by singer Vico Torriani in Moscow.
Delnon is informed of his expulsion by phone when the 37-year-old is about to give an interview to Blick in his “Chez Reto” ice rink in La Chaux-de-Fonds. «Can’t I have my own opinion? Is that forbidden? ”He asks. “Every player and also the officials can confirm that I have never mixed sport and politics.”
Delnon himself played 74 international matches and was part of the European championship team from 1950. From the 1947 World Cup in Prague, he and his brothers Othmar and Hugo, who also played in the national team, described their father Giachem as “fanatical anarchists”, brought three 40 centimeter tall sculptures of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin with them, which is said to have caused a sensation at customs.
“D. knows how to cleverly camouflage his bad game”
Another visit to the East was fatal for Delnon, the one with La Chaux-de-Fonds, where he was first a player and then a player-coach from 1950 to 1961. A year before he was kicked out, after a guest performance in the GDR, he told the PdA newspaper “Voix ouvrière” that the East Germans were happier than the Swiss.
It was only later that it became known that the Delnon state security had been targeting Delnon since August 1960, created a fiche and bugged telephone calls. He was trying “to push through the HC La Chaux-de-Fonds with left-wing extremists”, was a report by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office dated January 4, 1962, which was leaked to the association. “D. knows how to camouflage his bad game skillfully, but he is kept under close scrutiny.”
Bastard, dirty bastard
While the Graubünden man on the other side of the Röstigraben, popular in French-speaking Switzerland, received support, the newspapers in German-speaking Switzerland were largely behind the dismissal. Delnon received death threats and was insulted as a “pig communist”, “bastard” or “dirty fox”.
Later Delnon was still a coach at Friborg. In 1983 he died of kidney problems at the age of 59.