Heilpern, Herb

Herbert Heilpern

Sport:
track and field

Country Represented:
Austria

Years Competed:
1936

Olympic Info:
A member of the Austrian track and field team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Heilpern competed in the 100-meter sprint but did not qualify for the finals.

Career Highlights:
Heilpern, a former soccer goalkeeper for the Hakoah club of Vienna, emigrated to the United States in 1939. He then became the president of the German-American soccer league of New York from 1969-1975, and was also the co-founder of the North American Soccer League in 1967 and the New York Cosmos in 1971. Heilpern, who made his mark as a player and administrator, was known to speak his mind and always believed that Americans needed to play in Europe in order to improve.

Years before Major League Soccer started in the U.S., Heilpern said he would have sent two or three American teams to play a regular season in a European league -- first, second, or third division. Herb said: "To play American against American, you're never going to learn." Heilpern was inducted into the National (U.S.) Soccer Hall of Fame in 1988.

Birth and Death Dates:
b. March 19, 1919 - d. Sept. 27, 1999

Origin:
Austria

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