Marcus Urban is a former German football player. He played with the East German national youth football team and in the second division club Rot-Weiß Erfurt in the 1980s and early 1990s. Several years afterwards he came out as a gay man. He has spoken publicly about the difficulties that gay footballers experience, and he is now a spokesperson and campaigner on diversity issues in sport and the workplace. As a child, he took on his step-father's surname, Schneider, but as an adult he changed it back to his mother's maiden name. In 2008 the sports journalist Ronny Blaschke published an authorised biography of Urban. This is titled Versteckspieler: Die Geschichte des schwulen Fußballers Marcus Urban
Life
Urban was born and grew up in the city ofWeimar, which was then in the German Democratic Republic. From 1984, when he was 13, until 1991 he attended a boarding sports school in the nearby city of Erfurt, support by the 2nd division Bundesliga club FC Rot-Weiß Erfurt. Such schools were widely used in the former Eastern bloc countries. He trained with East German world sports champions and olympic medal winners. He played for the East German national youth football team from 1986 to 1989, moving through each age class. In 1990 he was given an amateur contract to play for Rot-Weiß Erfurt. He played against future players of the German national team such as Bernd Schneider, Thomas Linke, Steffen Freund and Frank Rost. He was about to become a professional football player, but in 1991 he decided to quit due to the pressure of having to hide his homosexuality from the football world. In 1991 he began studies in urban and regional planning at Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, graduating in 2000 with a master's degree in engineering, specialising in renewable energy. During this time he spent a semester at Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II in Naples. He undertook his civil service year in 1997, working for an organisation that provided special therapies for disabled children based on theatre, music and art. Urban came out to family and friends in 1994, but it was not until 13 years later, in 2007, that he publicly came out in an interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag in which he spoke about the difficulties of gay football players. A year later, his biography was published. Grand Hotel Pictures, a Berlin film production company, started developing a film based on the book in 2009, but as at July 2017, nothing had been released. Today he is an adviser on diversity issues and also works as a life coach with individuals and organisations, specialising in the areas of self-confidence, diversity and intercultural skills. He makes appearances on TV, radio and in print media, discussing his experiences as a gay man in sport, and his work in this area. Urban advises the Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund, and the Sports Committee of the German Federal Parliament, as well as businesses and non-profit institutions. Urban is on the management team of the Verein für Vielfalt in Sport und Gesellschaft. In March 2010 he co-founded the diversity expertise network Fußball für Vielfalt, originally called Fußball gegen Homophobie. This is a project of the :de:Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld, an organisation that aims to carry on the work of the pioneering social scientist Magnus Hirschfeld, researching LGBT issues and seeking to prevent social discrimination against the LGBT community in Germany. As at May 2017, Marcus Urban lives in Berlin with his partner. He plays football in the over 40s team for Hertha BSC.
