A emotional farewell was bid to Jutta Müller accompanied by the Titanic song "My Heart Will Go On". On the day of her 95th birthday, the world's most successful figure skating coach was laid to rest at the municipal cemetery in Chemnitz on Wednesday. A small, close circle of family members around her daughter Gaby Seyfert, companions and friends accompanied the once dazzling personality on her final journey.
In addition to the former mayor of Chemnitz, Barbara Ludwig, two-time Olympic champion Katarina Witt also spoke. Alongside Witt, former athletes such as Jan Hoffmann, Ingo Steuer, Axel Rauschenbach, Annett Pötzsch and Aljona Savchenko paid their last respects to the coach.
At the age of 94, the "Iron Lady" of figure skating died on November 2 in a nursing home near Berlin. Born in Chemnitz, Müller, who began her coaching career at SC Karl-Marx-Stadt in 1955, won 57 medals with her protégés at the European Championships, World Championships and Olympic Games. She was a passionate coach who "really only thought about figure skating and left nothing to chance", Witt once said about her strict and authoritarian coach. "She recognized talent and was herself driven not to waste it."
The song "Time to Say Goodbye" was played at the farewell funeral service. Jutta Müller was buried alongside her husband Bringfried Müller, a former GDR national soccer player who died in 2016.
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