Siegfried Brietzke


Siegfried Brietzke is a German rower who competed for East Germany in the 1972 Summer Olympics, in the 1976 Summer Olympics, and in the 1980 Summer Olympics.

Private life

He was born in Rostock in 1952. Brietzke is married and had a son in 1974.

Rowing career

Brietzke responded to a television programme screened at Christmas 1967 where tall boys were sought as rowers, and he joined SC DHfK Leipzig in response. After training for just three years, he won a gold medal with Wolfgang Mager and cox Werner Lehmann at the 1970 World Rowing Junior Championships in Ioannina in the coxed pair. At the 1971 East German national championships, he came second in the coxless four.
At the 1972 Summer Olympics, Brietzke and his partner Mager won the gold medal in the coxless pair event. Mager and Brietzke won the East German national championship in the coxless pair in 1973, but a few weeks later at the 1973 European Rowing Championships in Moscow they came fourth only in this boat class.
At the 1974 East German national championships, Brietzke, Mager, Stefan Semmler, and Andreas Decker became champions in two boat classes: in the coxless four, and in the coxed four assisted by coxswain Matthias Sommer. They went to the 1974 World Rowing Championships in Lucerne as a coxless four and won gold. Brietzke, Mager, Semmler, and Decker won the national coxless four event every year until 1979. The four won the 1975 World Rowing Championships in Nottingham, the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the 1977 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam, but were beaten to second place by the team from the Soviet Union at the 1978 World Rowing Championships in Cambridge, New Zealand. They won gold again at the 1979 World Rowing Championships in Bled, and won a further Olympic gold in 1980 in Moscow, but with Jürgen Thiele having replaced Wolfgang Mager. After the Moscow Olympics, Brietzke was the only sports person that year to be awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold with honour clasp, the highest sports award of the GDR.

Post-rowing life

In 2013, it was revealed that Brietzke was a member of the Stasi, the state security service of the German Democratic Republic. Under the codename "Charlie", his role was to control other athletes and report those with "deviant thinking".