Jean Löring

Hans "Jean" Löring (16 August 1934 – 6 March 2005) was a German football player and entrepreneur best known for his role as chairman of SC Fortuna Köln, a role he filled for over 30 years, from 1967 to 2001. In the years before the introduction of the Bundesliga, he himself played in the Oberliga for Prussia Dellbrück, FC Viktoria Köln and Alemannia Aachen. After that he was a boxing manager for a time. As an entrepreneur, he was successful in electrical and pipeline construction, among other things.

Biography Born as Hans Löring, he himself took the name Jean which, in the local Cologne dialect, is pronounced Schäng. Löring, by trade, was an electrician and after his active career started an electrical business. He also dealt in real estate. In the first phase of his presidency, Löring also filled in as a player for the contract players' team, which has since been promoted to the Regionalliga West. He was a regular player and was used in 26 games in which he scored a goal. 1969/1970 followed another 9 and 1970/71 another three appearances, each without scoring, so that Löring completed a total of 38 regional league games for Fortuna. During his presidency, Fortuna made it from the district league to the next higher league every two years. In addition, Löring was manager of the Cologne boxing professional Jupp Elze, who died in 1968 as the German champion after a fight for European championship.

Löring spend his final years mostly alone, accompanied only by his four dogs.

Character Jean Löring was one of the most colorful figures in German football. In 1975 he acquired shares in the then ailing Dorint hotel chain through the mediation of his friend and Cologne financial broker Herbert Ebertz.

In 1978 he had a tennis hall built on Vorgebirgstrasse opposite the Südstadion in Cologne – the home of his football club – in which his offices and the "Bacchus" club house were housed. At that time the stadium was under construction. After being relegated immediately, Fortuna then played uninterruptedly in the 2. Bundesliga for 26 years. The chance of renewed promotion was given away in 1986 in the relegation against Borussia Dortmund (2:0, 1:3, 0:8).

The greatest sporting success of Fortuna under his presidency was entering the DFB Pokal final on 11 June 1983 against 1. FC Köln, the first pure city derby in this competition (list of DFB-Pokal finals) - Fortuna lost to FC in the RheinEnergieStadion with 0:1. Löring also liked to refer to his Fortuna as his "Vereinche", and his involvement as the club's biggest patron is said to have cost him 15 million euros over the years. With the support of many volunteers, he created the largest youth department within the DFB during this time. Today's Fortuna has succeeded in maintaining and even expanding this large youth work for Cologne. He suffered a heart attack in 1997 and largely withdrew from public life. In 1998 he separated from his wife and now lived with the entrepreneur Erika Wirtz. His largest company, ELRO, was in crisis from December 2000 and in May 2001 allegedly had tax debts amounting to DM 4.5 million.

Löring promoted the musical singer Yana Kris-Molina (born in 1968 in London). Johannes Böhne, who started at Sparkasse KölnBonn in 1962, took over the position of managing director at Fortuna Köln in May 2001. The castle with a floor space of 608 m² and an associated park of 33,000 m² was foreclosed on in January 2003; the District Court of Düren had set the market value at EUR 2.7 million and the creditor bank BAG Bankaktiengesellschaft from Hamm was awarded the contract. With the award, Löring had lost his permanent right of residence, which was secured in the land register; the right of residence, capitalized at 383,000 euros, was bought by the bank in the bid. In 2009, the creditor bank was prepared to allow the castle, which had been vacant for six years, to be auctioned off for a minimum bid of EUR 995,000. After extensive restoration, it is now owned by the Cologne entrepreneur Enrico Drechsel. Fortuna's second bankruptcy followed in January 2003, and a third was unavoidable.

Due to the economic failure and his poor health - his cancer was diagnosed in 1997 after a heart attack - and not least due to his generosity towards his club, Löring had become almost penniless in the last years of his life. And the club was no longer doing well without the long-standing patron: Fortuna Köln fell into the fourth-tier Oberliga Nordrhein and had to stop playing there in the 2004/2005 season for financial reasons after only being able to score three points in the first half of the season. In February 2005, the team was deregistered from playing operations after the club had already filed for bankruptcy for the third time shortly before.

Death Löring, suffering from cancer, died at the Hospiz Dr.-Mildred-Scheel-Haus in Cologne on 6 March 2005. He was buried at the Südfriedhof, located in Köln-Zollstock.

In October 2022, Cornel Wachter published the artist edition "LÖRING", the woodruff by FLIMM from Brühl near Cologne. Wachter's son had the idea of choosing the year SC Fortuna Köln was promoted to the first Bundesliga as the edition, 1973. For the first time, the premium product from FLIMM was rededicated, in homage to the lifetime achievements of the "eternal president" of the sports club Fortuna Köln "Hans". Schäng" Löring, who i.a. with its "Vereincher", as the Schäng called "his" club in Cologne dialect, was at times able to provide the largest youth department in German football. So Carl Flimm and the FLIMM family agreed to the request for a one-off relabelling. The designer Mathias Langer, a member of the "Schäng Gäng" fan club, designed the labels.