Leopold Stastny — Survivor of Nazi Terror, Legendary Coach, and Inventor of the S

As coach, Leopold Stastny (Slovak spelling: Šťastný) led FC Wacker Innsbruck to the top of the National League beginning in the fall of 1965. Drawing on his expertise, he then laid the foundation for Austrian soccer’s future successes as head coach of the national team (1968–1975). In 1975, he founded the Schülerliga, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2025. Stastny was a star as both a player and a coach in his hometown of Bratislava starting in the 1930s. It remains virtually unknown in Austria that, as a Jew, he survived the Nazi era only by sheer luck.
The exhibition, originally designed by the Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava, has now been re-curated in collaboration with Fairplay Prevention, the Innsbruck City Archives/City Museum, and the Innsbruck Fan Initiative. It tells the story of Leopold Stastny’s eventful life, spanning Bratislava, Innsbruck, Vienna, and Canada. It has been expanded to include panels on Tyrolean soccer, particularly the ideological conflicts of the interwar period, as well as Stastny’s time in Innsbruck and his tenure as team manager. QR codes provide access to excerpts from contemporary television reports about Stastny as well as recent interviews with his former teammates.