Heinz Weifenbach

Heinz Weifenbach (11 July 1939 – 21 February 2015) was a German ice hockey executive best known for the 1987 advertising contract he negotiated in which his club, the ECD Iserlohn, advertised Muammar Gaddafi's Green Book on its shirts.

Biography Weifenbach, in private life a developer, took over as chairman of ECD Iserlohn in 1981 and held this position until 1991, with the club folding in between and reforming under the name of ECD Sauerland. During his time as chairman, he invested a great deal of his own money in the club and was described by the sentencing judge as an "Ice hockey nut" .

In the last years of his life, Weifenbach suffered from dementia and required permanent care. He died on 21 February 2015.

Weifenbach also took the case to the internal tribunal of the DEB who ruled partly in his favour. The club was allowed to continue its existence, now under the new name of ECD Sauerland, but not in the Bundesliga. Instead, if it fulfilled certain requirements, it would be allowed to enter the promotion round to the Bundesliga. In the end, Weifenbach was not able to raise a new team in time, the majority of the ECD Iserlohn players having left the club with the insolvency, and Sauerland was forced to restart play in the third division Oberliga.

The affair caused a rift between the Bundesliga clubs and the DEB, with some of them advocating a break away league which would have included Austrian and Italian clubs. A second shirt, different in color combination, is currently exhibited at the German Ice Hockey Hall of Fame in Augsburg.