He had a powerful voice.

And that's how he was perceived: as a booming, unmistakable, constantly attacking voice of the fight against doping in Germany.

Not an athlete, certainly not an official or politician: a scientist, Professor Werner Franke, molecular biologist, renowned cancer researcher, feared.

A hunter of the dopers, especially the backers, the desk workers.

Anno Hecker

Responsible editor for sports.

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Without Werner Franke's power of disclosure, without his penetrance and tenacity, to expose the miserable whitewashing of organized German sport with skin and hair on sleepless nights in Heidelberg and before almost all courts in this country, the Germans would probably still think of the "sports miracle" of the GDR believe and in the overriding cleanliness of their western heroes.

He saw the poisoning of young people, minors, he saw the terrible consequences, and he called the manipulation by its name: a crime!

And the perpetrators, the doctors of the system, as his favorite enemies: criminals!

A coup for the German-German reappraisal was the book by his wife Brigitte Berendonk, "Dopingdokumente, von der Forschung zum Fraud" from 1991. A standard work of enlightenment to this day, a detailed collection of, among other things, the secret doping research in the GDR with data and names, supplemented by anabolic steroid doping in the Federal Republic.

Franke was responsible for the scientific evaluation of the files found and Stasi documents.

And then set out to hold those responsible for the human experiments accountable.

His tireless work helped many athletes to see and understand afterwards that they had been abused and how ruthlessly they had been abused.

Franke received the Federal Cross of Merit.

But not exactly to the delight of organized sport.

Because he documented his involvement and looking the other way in person.

Because he was merciless.

Franke put everything in the service of his unshakable conviction that he was solely committed to finding the truth and, as an outstanding scientist, at most responsible to himself, and certainly not to those who couldn't hold a candle to him.

Nothing he didn't use or used to get where he was going.

He couldn't or wouldn't show any consideration.

Neither on enemy, on friend, nor on himself. Franke's brilliance contributed significantly to the clear picture of the German-German doping history with all coercion and misery.

There is nothing to shake.

He died on Monday at the age of 82.