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Walter Bechtold

German footballer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ1672945 ↗
Source-derived summary

Walter Bechtold (born 25 July 1947) is a German former professional footballer.

Career

Bechtold began his professional career in 1965 with Eintracht Frankfurt. On November 20, 1965, in a 6–1 away victory against Borussia Neunkirchen, he became the youngest Bundesliga player to score a hat-trick, aged 18 years and 118 days. The midfielder scored 33 goals in his four years with the club, but was never a first-team regular.

In 1969, he transferred to local rivals Kickers Offenbach in the Regionalliga. With Kickers he had his most successful season; the club being promoted to the top flight as champions and winning the DFB Cup against 1. FC Köln. This saw the team qualify for the next season's European Cup Winners' Cup, where they were knocked out in the first round by Belgian side Club Brugge K.V. Bechtold played for a year in the Bundesliga with Offenbach before being relegated back to the regional league. After one season back in the lower division, he moved to SV Darmstadt 98. He returned once again to the Bundesliga in 1978 with Darmstadt, before being relegated once more a year later.

Editorial summary

“Walter Bechtold” enters the record as german footballer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Walter, Bechtold and German can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1947, 1965, 1969, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1947-07-25. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Walter, Bechtold and German.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Walter Bechtold” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Walter, Bechtold and German provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1672945. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1965, 1969 and 1978.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Walter Bechtold”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Walter Bechtold primary sources, Walter Bechtold archive and Walter research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Walter Bechtold”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Walter Bechtold” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.