From the ice rink to the local council

Stephan Konder has always had both feet firmly on the ground. The now 56-year-old former professional ice hockey player and now a versatile and experienced business expert - his birthday is March 2nd - just laughs when asked about his personal “American dream”. He was never a dishwasher and will most likely never become a millionaire. And yet: With commitment, teamwork, competence, empathy and the ability to approach people, he has achieved remarkable goals.

For Stephan Konder there is life after sport. He is happily married to Zdenka and they have two almost grown children together. Professionally, he is the head of the communications department at the Südtiroler Sparkasse and in public, after serving as a city councilor, he rose to the position of president of the Bolzano municipal council. “I owe a lot to ice hockey.” Stephan Konder “I owe a lot to ice hockey. That was a real, tough life school for me,” says Stephan Konder. Team martial arts really shaped him through and through. Both externally and internally. Konder, born in 1967, is a muscle-bound powerhouse who has matured through countless ice hockey battles. Today he stays fit with golf and kitesurfing.

Stephan Konder and his family.

He remembers with amusement the Italian headline that he was once the highest-paid ice hockey professional with the Devils in Silvio Berlusconi's “sports circus”. “The Gazzetta dello Sport actually reported a quarter of a century ago that a player earned huge amounts of money for Milan in the 1993 and 1994 seasons. It’s understandable that countless journalists jumped on this “banger”. I remember well: for the first season it was 414 million lire, for the second season it was a whopping 567 million lire. That was a lot of money and more than the professional footballers Marco van Basten and Paolo Maldini received,” says Konder.

A mysterious paper “This mysterious ice hockey croissant was listed under the abbreviation “an-er” in the payroll. The tax authority demanding back payments suspected me, Stephan Konder, behind the abbreviation. There was an investigation and a trial. I was blown away and was finally cleared of all suspicion. Last but not least, it was noticeable that I was active in Milan in the 1989/90 and 1990/91 seasons and not later,” emphasizes Konder. He was able to prove conclusively that he was wrongly targeted by the financial police. Who was actually hiding behind the mysterious four encrypted letters, whether anyone actually pocketed the money at the time or whether it was just “ghost fee notes” doing the rounds, was not clear back then and is even less so today. “In any case, I could have put the millions to good use,” laughs Konder. Maybe his life would have been different.

Stephan Konder in the Devils uniform.

As a child or teenager, he attended elementary and middle school, Franciscan high school and commercial high school in Bolzano. After the Devils adventure, Konder completed his economics studies at the Università degli Studi di Bergamo before gaining his first professional experience as export area manager and marketing manager for Germany at the De Longhi Group. It was probably a coincidence that De-Longhi was the main sponsor of Serie A ice hockey champions Cortina at this time. Konder was in Germany for almost four years. Konder is currently head of communications at the Sparkasse and has been a very active member of the Bolzano municipal council since 2008. And he still follows ice hockey, preferably live in the Sparkasse Arena, of course.

It all started fifty years ago in Bolzano's old town district of St. Johann. We played as best we could with minigolf balls, roller skates and self-made rudimentary hockey sticks. “The goals were some wooden slats, we made the nets out of potato sacks. We were six or seven boys, I remember Hannes Larcher and Robert Blaas and Stefan Botter, whose father Hans was later Carmine Tucci's brother-in-law and Rittner's goalkeeper. After all, it was Robert Gamper, who was great in every respect, who led me to HC Bozen,” reports Konder.

“There I met Maurizio Scudier, Robert Oberrauch, Paolo Casciaro, etc. We played in the so-called baby league. My very first teacher was Jaroslav Pavlu, then came John Cristiano. I guess I had some talent. In any case, the legendary Hans Schulz came to me and took me and my friends to Latemar, then Serie B and, to the delight of the then HC Latemar president Mario Minuz, the HCB basin, from which the first HCB team always enjoyed fishing. Hans Schulz was unique (and also the youth coach of the later state governor Arno Kompatscher, editor's note). The pithy sayings of the Czech, who died in the retirement home in Ravensburg in December 2017, are history. Example? Comment to a somewhat clumsy goalie: 'He stands in the goal like a fire hydrant' or to the lightweight Bruno Zarrillo: 'You only weigh 40 kilograms with a wet bathrobe,'” says Konder. In fact, “Hansi’s” performances, for example in the “Sulphur Bath” of the unforgettable Jakob Geier ice hockey cabaret, were at their best.

Adventure in Lombardy While studying in Lombardy, Konder played two seasons of second division ice hockey in Bergamo and a B season in Milan. Finally, coach Ignac Kavec brought Stephan Konder and Ricky Tessari to Como before Silvio Berlusconi's Mediolanum group entered the ice hockey business in a big way. There, coach Jim Webster filled the Devils' heavily foreign squad with some locals. The daring, powerful South Tyrolean was just right for him. Konder scored 4 goals and had 5 assists in his first year with the Devils. Kent Ruhnke also didn't want to do without Stephan Konder & Co. the following year. “Sports director of the then dazzling team was the former top footballer Fabio Capello. My second Devils year, 1990/91, were also the months of the most brilliant player I was ever allowed to play with (unfortunately far too little): Jari Kurri. The Finn, five-time Stanley Cup winner with Edmonton, one of the most successful Europeans in the NHL and a member of the Wayne Gretzky-Esa Tikkanen dream line, wanted to follow his two friends from the Oilers to Los Angeles to the Kings. In order to do this free of charge, Kurri took a “development worker” sabbatical with the Devils in Milan.

Kurri was a gentleman from head to toe. He carried out his program in a highly professional manner; almost every one of his 27 goals in the 30 Serie A games (he totaled an incredible 75 points) was a masterpiece. “But Kurri also taught the Devils legionnaires, who were then consistently second-class and difficult to tame, what makes great athletes: discipline, willingness to fight, and above all, modesty and respect for friends and opponents,” remembers Konder. The Devils came third this season with Kurri behind Saima Milan (coached by Lou Vairo) and Bozen (coached by Rudi Hiti). The Berlusconian devils' heyday came later in the season when they won the title twice in 1991/92 and 1992/93. Then the former media czar, now 86 years old, closed his sports hardware store. The Milan sports group was dissolved almost overnight, ice hockey and volleyball players were liquidated, and AC Milan was sold to the highest bidder.

Great teammates “After the Kurri year I felt stronger than ever. I had learned a lot, I felt strong and calm enough for Serie A. But at the Devils, under the eccentric coach Ted Sator (and the following year under the Swede Dan Hober), the flood of Italians and foreigners reached its peak. There was only Mike Richard, Gaetes Orlando, Santino Pellegrino, Maurizio Catenacci, Mark Napier, Tony Circelli, Ivan Zanatta, Bruno Baseotto, Tim Tilley, Rick Morocco, Mike De Angelis, Doug McCarthy, Vito D'Angelo, Nick Sanza and Roberto Romano There is room for Ricky Tessari, Alessandro Cintori, Paolo Casciaro and Maurizio Scudier and no other local player,” says Konder. Konder stayed in Chiavenna for another season and completed his economics studies at Cattolica. De Longhi's call to move to Germany soon came at just the right time. In Aschaffenburg, in the Hesse Regional League with the “Elchen”, Konder ended his remarkable ice hockey career at a higher level. But once you've caught the ice hockey fever, it never lets go. “I enjoyed playing in the youth club, and my friends and I also won the Italian runner-up title in inline hockey,” says Konder.

And it was at a training camp and subsequent ice hockey tournament organized by the youth club in Landsberg that Stephan Konder also found his personal happiness. The young German student Zdenka Charouskova from Lazne Belohrad in the Czech Republic worked in the bed and breakfast in Bavaria. They greeted each other, got to know each other, met often when he was working in Frankfurt and she was studying in Cologne, and in 2004 Zdenka and Stephan went to the altar. Seeing the children grow up somewhere other than South Tyrol was out of the question for Stephan and Zdenka. Jan (18) and Valentina (15) ultimately emerged from the happy union. And Konder himself, who also taught economics, found his calling and career in the communications department of the Südtiroler Sparkasse.

From ice hockey to politics Because there is life after sport, Stephan Konder at some point ventured onto the slippery parquet, which is not unlike ice: his career in local politics is quite remarkable. In 2005, the committed fighter ran for the Bolzano municipal council for the first time and was elected. But because the SVP potential was exhausted after the appointment of Bolzano's deputy mayor Klaus Ladinser from outside, there was no longer a place available for Konder. He then moved up in 2008, when Elmar Pichler-Rolle was elected to the South Tyrolean state parliament in the same year. He thus managed to get into the local council during the same term of office. The highlight of his political career so far was his appointment as city councilor for economics. He carried out this role with heart and soul from June 2019 to October 2020.

Stephan Konder has been President of the Bolzano Municipal Council since the end of January this year, having been Vice President until that day and succeeding the current Vice President Monica Franch.

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From the ice rink to the local council

What happened to Stephan Konder? The man from Bolzano who “danced” with ice hockey icon Jari Kurri in Milan for a winter. His adventurous path from ice hockey player to Bolzano municipal council president.

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