Heiko Weber

Heiko Benno Weber was born on 26 June 1965 in Thale, in the Harz region of what was then the Bezirk Halle in East Germany. He played his youth football with BSG Stahl Thale, the works sports club of the town's steelworks, and broke into its senior side as a teenager, gaining his first experience of national football in the second tier DDR-Liga in the 1983/84 season.

To supporters and team-mates he was known as Benno, which was in fact his middle name.

In 1988 Weber joined FC Carl Zeiss Jena, one of the leading clubs in East Germany, and played there for ten years as a forward. On 26 October 1988 he scored at home against Sampdoria of Italy in a European tie, which proved to be Jena's last goal in European competition at its home ground.

His most famous goal came on 25 May 1991, the final matchday of the last DDR-Oberliga season. Late in the game at Energie Cottbus he made it 2-0 to Jena, a goal that secured promotion to the 2. Bundesliga on goal difference and was the last goal ever scored in the Oberliga. In the reunified league system he made 148 appearances and scored 36 goals for Jena in the 2. Bundesliga, and he played 33 Regionalliga matches for the club in 1994/95. In total he played more than 300 times for Jena. He spent 1998/99 with Preussen Muenster before returning to Jena for a final season.

Weber began coaching at FC Thueringen Weida in 2000, then took charge of Jena's under 19 team in 2003/04. In June 2004 he became head coach of a Jena side that had dropped into the fourth tier, and led it to the Regionalliga in 2005 and, unexpectedly, straight on into the 2. Bundesliga in 2006. He was released in April 2007 with the team in danger of relegation.

He then coached Energie Cottbus II and, after Petrik Sander was relieved of his duties, led the Cottbus first team for one Bundesliga match as caretaker, a 5-0 defeat by Bayern Munich. From April 2008 to June 2009 he was team manager at FC Erzgebirge Aue, where he assembled the core of the squad that later won promotion to the 2. Bundesliga, while training for his professional coaching licence at the German Sport University Cologne, which he completed in 2010. He returned to Jena as sporting director in 2009 and as head coach in April 2011, leaving that October.

He coached SSV Markranstaedt from 2013 to 2015 and ZFC Meuselwitz from 2015 to 2020, then ran Jena's youth academy and reserve team from 2020 to 2022 before a second spell at Meuselwitz that ended in April 2023. After leaving football he became a teacher at a primary school in Jena, work he said he greatly enjoyed.

Weber was a father and a grandfather, and was remembered by former players as a friendly, optimistic and warm person. Robin Lenk, whom he signed for Aue after a cruciate ligament injury, said Weber had given him a second chance and called him a very good coach and a kind and lovable man.

After his cancer diagnosis he said that he had always been the person who was there for others, motivating people and guiding them towards their sporting goals, and that accepting his new role was hard for him.

Weber was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer shortly before Christmas 2025 and announced his illness publicly in February 2026. In early June 2026 former team-mates and players, among them former Germany international Bernd Schneider, gathered for a benefit match in Weida, where Weber sat on the coaching bench for the last time and gave an emotional speech in the dressing room.

He died on the morning of 26 October 2026, aged 61, from the effects of his illness. FC Carl Zeiss Jena announced his death the same day, saying that the news had been confirmed by those closest to him and that the club family was deeply moved and unbearably sad. The club noted that he died exactly 38 years after scoring against Sampdoria.

Weber holds a lasting place in German football history as the scorer of the last goal in the DDR-Oberliga, a goal that also took Jena into the professional game of reunified Germany. FC Carl Zeiss Jena described him as someone who shaped the club in the years around the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification like hardly anyone else, and said that what he had achieved for the club would never be forgotten.

As a coach he is remembered above all for rebuilding Jena from the fourth tier to the 2. Bundesliga with two promotions in a row, and at Aue for laying the groundwork of the team that won promotion in 2010.