King of the shooters

This sport is (not only) child’s play. We are at the Bambus Murmel Ranch of the Murmelspielclub marble club in Ludwigshafen, and here it’s all about concentration, skill and luck—and above all, about a sense of community.

The small clay balls glisten in the sun. Niki Stroh takes three white ones out of the case, Theo-Heinz Adrian three yellow ones. And off they go! They shake hands with solemn seriousness. Niki crouches down and gives his marbles such a skilful tap on the red ash field that the club chairman Theo-Heinz already suspects that this game will not last long. Just a few moves later, the young man has won the round sinking the last ball into the round hollow. Theo-Heinz takes it with humour, and with some pride, too. At the grounds of the Ludwigshafen Bambus Murmel Ranch there is a clear favourite—even though Niki is nearly blind.

Niki is a member of the Murmelspielclub marble club in Ludwigshafen and probably one of the most unusual coaches in Germany, because his vision is only three to five per cent so that he can only guess rather than see where the 16-millimetre small marble lies. “But I can feel exactly where it is,” he says. You believe him clearly, because he shoots each marble with such incredible confidence. Every Saturday afternoon, he calls his team together for training. The 1. Murmelspielclub Ludwigshafen-Friesenheim 1997 e.V., as the club is officially called, has won the German championships three times and is vice world champion in German hole play.

“At the beginning, we thought we were the only crazy ones,” says club founder Theo-Heinz and laughs. When the landlord of a pub put a washing powder box full of marbles on his regulars’ table a long time ago, they spontaneously founded the club, not knowing anything about the German Marble Council, the rules of the game and the geographical distribution of this unusual discipline. Today there are 19 clubs throughout Germany, the youngest of which is probably the one in the town of Weisenheim am Sand in the Palatinate region. The Ludwigshafen club is the southernmost.

Theo-Heinz is the first chairman and somewhat the king of the marble players, as you could humorously describe him. He is the heart and soul of the dedicated sports club where it’s all about concentration and skill, but above all, about a sense of community. He founded the marble club in 1997 together with Franz Mayer and Rüdiger Müller “on a whim over a beer.” There were eleven members at the time. Now, more than 20 years later, there are 172.

At the beginning, we thought we were the only crazy ones

Heinz-Theo Adrian

“Niki has been with us since his schooldays,” says Theo-Heinz, who is now retired but was looking for a balance to his stressful working life as a shift supervisor and instructor at BASF when he started playing marbles. For many years, the marble club has been cooperating with the Schloss-Schule, a special needs school in the Oggersheim district of Ludwigshafen, that Niki attended. Several times a year, the club members play marbles with the children, invite them to parties or visit them with their marble tables, which they developed themselves and which they also take with them when visiting other schools and nurseries. “The Ludwigshafen pentathlon was created using them,” says Theo-Heinz, each table offering a different obstacle course. They can also be used for training in winter when everyone meets in the back room of the Ludwigshafen restaurant Zum Luitpold.

Since 2016, however, the marble club has had its own club grounds behind the cycle racing track in the Friesenheim district. It is an enchanted piece of green space, in part overgrown with giant bamboo. They lease it from the city. “We don’t receive any subsidies.” The three meticulously maintained playing fields on the grounds are each 3 by 6 metres in size. Like on a tennis court, the red ash on them is regularly and carefully smoothed and watered. This accelerates the marbles as they roll. A game usually lasts half an hour. Two teams of four players compete against each other, with everyone playing against everyone else. Whoever knocks the marble out of the field loses the game. The winner is not the player who sinks the most marbles, but the last one, into the round hole.

However, the hole is the goal. And hitting this target requires skill and a little bit of luck—not strength. Therefore, the grandparents’ generation can compete against children. “Our youngest marble player is five,” says Theo-Heinz referring to his grandson Ben. Shooting marbles is one of the oldest games known to mankind. It was played in ancient Egypt and Rome, and even Emperor Augustus is said to have been a passionate marble player. Marbles competitions have been held in Germany in two categories since 1996: German Lochklickern and English Ringspiel. “Nowadays there are marble clubs and championships all over Europe,” says Theo-Heinz. In some respects, however, Germany is still a developing country: “In the UK, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, the sport is much more widespread,” he explains and goes on to tell us that large marble courses are being built in France—made out of sand. On the fresh Atlantic coast. A nice scene to imagine on this hot summer afternoon at the Bambus Murmel Ranch, where the air shimmers over the red ash field near the Rhine.

https://murmelclub.com