Adolf Prokop

Adolf Prokop was born on 2 February 1939 in Altenbuch, in the Trautenau district of the Sudetenland. The village is now Staré Buky in the Czech Republic. After the Second World War he settled in Thuringia, in what became East Germany.

As a young man he played football in the 1950s for a local Traktor works team in northern Thuringia before turning to refereeing in 1958. He trained as an industrial clerk and later worked as an inspector at VEB Weimar-Werk, a maker of agricultural machinery.

Prokop refereed for the football association of East Germany from 1958 to 1988. Between 1969 and 1988 he took charge of 283 matches in the DDR-Oberliga, the top division, beginning with 1. FC Magdeburg against HFC Chemie on 27 August 1969. He refereed the East German cup final, the FDGB-Pokal, in 1978 and 1987, and his last major domestic appointment was the cup tie between Union Berlin and BFC Dynamo on 10 November 1988.

He was on the FIFA list from 1973 to 1988 and refereed more than 85 international fixtures, including 27 or 28 full internationals and 60 European club matches. His first full international was the Netherlands against Argentina in Amsterdam on 26 May 1974. He refereed at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, the 1980 European Championship in Italy, the 1982 World Cup in Spain and the 1984 European Championship in France.

His European finals were the 1979 Super Cup between Nottingham Forest and Barcelona, which Forest won 1 to 0, the first leg of the 1981 UEFA Cup final, in which Ipswich Town beat AZ Alkmaar 3 to 0, and the 1984 Cup Winners' Cup final in Basel, where Juventus beat Porto 2 to 1.

At home his record was disputed. Rival supporters often questioned his neutrality and accused him of favouring BFC Dynamo, the Berlin club backed by the security services that won ten league titles in a row in the 1980s. After reunification it emerged that Prokop had served the Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, as an officer on special assignment, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. The Thueringer Allgemeine wrote at his death that he was viewed critically to the end because of this.

Prokop lived in Erfurt. From 1980 he was a member of the referees' commission of the East German football association and from 1986 its deputy chairman. After the founding of the Thuringian Football Association he served for many years on its referees' committee, supported young referees and worked as a match assessor until ill health stopped him a few years before his death. He was a popular referee at charity and veterans' matches, and in June 2026 he attended the 50th reunion of former Oberliga referees in Weissensee.

Adolf Prokop died in Erfurt on 12 August 2026, aged 87. The cause of death was not made public. The Thuringian Football Association announced his death the following day. Its president, Udo Penssler-Beyer, said he had been surprised by the news, called Prokop the most successful referee in the history of Thuringian football and said his work would be remembered long beyond his active career.

Prokop was one of the few East German referees to work at the highest level of international football, with appearances at two World Cups, two European Championships and an Olympic tournament, and three European club finals. His legacy is also shaped by the doubts about his neutrality in domestic football and by his service with the Stasi, which became public after 1990. In Thuringia he was remembered as a mentor to generations of younger referees.