Eberhard Wienholt, the Hamburg-based patron, supporter and benefactor of German sailing, has died. He passed away on 21 July 2026. Wienholt was an honorary member of the German Offshore Sailing Association Hansa (DHH), of the Flensburg Sailing Clubs (FSC), the Yacht clubs in Lübeck and the North German Regatta Club (NRV) and a recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class. For more than five decades, he supported German sailing both financially and organisationally – from youth training on Optimists right through to the promotion of modern foil boats. At the DHH, most people simply called him “Mister DHH”.
A chance encounter with consequences
Wienholt was originally from Rendsburg and, over the course of his career, built up the Hamburg-based trading company Fritz Köster into a successful business. He had been a member of the DHH since 1964.
He found his way into active association work in a rather unusual way: In 1975, the then DHH chairman, Admiral Bernhard Rogge, invited him to join him on a trip to Kiel Week aboard the motor-sailer Kormoran – and took the opportunity to brief Wienholt on the association’s precarious financial situation. The accounts were empty; loans and donations kept the DHH afloat through the winter every year. Wienholt agreed to help. “I simply always wanted the best for the DHH, to help it achieve financial success,” he later said, explaining his motivation.
Christoph Schumann, a long-standing editor at *YACHT* and himself associated with the DHH for decades, has described Wienholt’s commitment at first hand in the DHH Anniversary Chronicle 2025: “If it is true that a person is always judged by what they leave behind, then Eberhard Wienholt is already one of the great, enduring patrons of sailing. At the very least, he has dedicated his life to it.”
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The people behind the scenes
Over the years, Wienholt held several positions within the DHH: he sat on the board of directors, served as treasurer, first chairman and later chairman of the board of directors. During this time, he drove forward the modernisation of the association – new ships, new buildings, new structures. He recognised developments early on and provided support where it could have a long-term impact, without waiting for ready-made plans.
In his chronicle, Schumann vividly describes how Wienholt was on the verge of despair during his first visit to the DHH offices in the Colonnaden in Hamburg: “I found a complete shambles. According to the association, it had 20,000 members, all listed on index cards in dusty filing cabinets, along with a vast amount of unclear data.” Wienholt overhauled the administration, switched to computerised systems and eventually moved the office to his own company premises on Rothenbaumchaussee.
When the masonry of the Hanseatic Yacht School Glücksburg (HYS) showed signs of dry rot and surveyors were unable to guarantee that it could be restored, his response is said to have been succinct: “No guarantee? Then we’ll build a new one!” In 2016, it was decided to replace the HYS’s then 53-year-old boathouse with a new building – constructed with substantial financial support from Eberhard Wienholt. It was his wish to inaugurate the new boathouse on his 90th birthday. The deadline was met. According to the DHH chronicle, at the laying of the foundation stone he had his original birth certificate set into the foundations.
In 1997, he founded the Eberhard Wienholt Foundation (EWS), which to this day provides 150,000 euros a year to support the training of instructors at the DHH sailing schools. Its stated aim is to support young people in offshore sailing.
“If it is indeed true that a person is always judged by what they leave behind, then Eberhard Wienholt is already one of the great, enduring patrons of the sport of sailing. At the very least, he gave his life to it.”
From the Optimist to the foil boat
Wienholt’s involvement was not limited to the DHH. He funded several J/70 keelboats for the Sailing Bundesliga through the North German Regatta Club (NRV). Two of them were christened ‘Helga’ and ‘Eberhard’ – as a tribute to Wienholt and his partner Helga Strelow. In addition, he supported the NRV’s foiling training group with several Waszps – small, fast single-handed boats with foils – thereby enabling young sailors to get started in this still-emerging discipline.
Together with his partner, he also supported the The Helga Cup, a regatta exclusively for women’s teams, which was launched by the NRV in 2018 and has grown to become the world’s largest women’s sailing regatta.
At the Flensburg Sailing Club, he funded five Waszp for the next generation. For the very youngest, the NRV organised the Eberhard Wienholt Cup, an Opti-C regatta on Hamburg’s Außenalster for the youngest sailors. Until a few years ago, Wienholt presented the winners with their prizes in person.
Within the DHH itself, Wienholt also played a key role in driving forward the modernisation of the fleet. In the 1990s, he championed the gradual replacement of the outdated ocean-going fleet in Glücksburg with modern GRP yachts. In the years that followed, several seven-figure sums were invested in new X-yachts, with Wienholt contributing substantial sums towards their financing.
With his extraordinary generosity and far-sightedness, Wienholt created structures and opportunities from which generations of sailors have benefited. DSV President “German sailing owes a great deal to Eberhard Wienholt,” says DSV President Mona Küppers in tribute. “For decades, his generous donations have made possible projects, initiatives and construction schemes that the clubs could never have realised on their own.”
Ursula Meer
Redakteurin Panorama und Reise