Hans-Jürgen Bäumler

Bäumler became famous in pair skating with his skating partner Marika Kilius. They won their first national title after skating together for just six weeks. Between 1958 and 1964, they won the German nationals four times and became European champions six times and World champions twice. Their coach was Erich Zeller. The duo won a silver medal at the 1960 Olympic Winter Games, and Bäumler became one of the youngest male figure skating Olympic medalists. In 1964, they won a silver medal again. Their placement caused controversy at the time, as many of the spectators were German and felt that the pair were marked unfairly low, though they had not skated as well as usual at either that competition or the preceding 1964 German Championships. Threatening letters were sent to the event officials, with Suzanne Morrow Francis a particular target due to the low marks she gave the couple, although they were in line with other scores she gave during the competition. After their loss at the Olympics, the pair considered not competing at the 1964 World Championships, but they were persuaded to do so by Kilius's friend Thomas Fritsch. They created a new free skate for the competition; for the middle part, they copied the program of the Olympic gold medalists, Ludmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov. The pair won the competition and retired from competitive skating to turn professional. Bäumler later said of their performance at the championships, "That was our absolutely best performance, there was nothing left." The duo had signed professional contracts and skated as professionals with Holiday on Ice before the 1964 Olympics, a violation of their amateur status and strict IOC rules. In 1966, they were stripped of the medal because of this. As The New York Times reported, the IOC "quietly re-awarded the West Germans their silver medals in 1987, 23 years after the Innsbruck Games, at an executive board meeting in Istanbul. The couple was deemed 'rehabilitated.'" After their amateur figure skating career, both became singers of German Schlagers (German version of pop songs). In the mid-1960s, they recorded some songs together; Bäumler also had songs as a solo singer. Bäumler's greatest success was the song "Wunderschönes fremdes Mädchen" ("Beautiful Foreign Girl"). The most successful songs of the duo were "Wenn die Cowboys träumen" ("When Cowboys Dream") and "Honeymoon in St. Tropez", both in 1964. From 1964, Bäumler has also worked as an actor. In 1969, he had a main role in The White Horse Inn, and in 1970 in Maske in Blau (Mask in Blue), both operettas. He was also successful in the television series Salto Mortale. In the mid-1970s, Bäumler hosted several quiz shows, among others Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm ("The apple does not fall far from the trunk"), Das waren Hits ("These were hits"), and Was wäre wenn ("What if") on ZDF. Between 1990 and 1993, he worked for RTL. Later, he was also seen as a theatre actor.