Otto Nerz (21 October 1892 – 18 April 1949) was a German football player and manager and the first head coach of the Germany national team between 1923 and 1936.

He volunteered to serve in the German Army in the First World War, until after being wounded in 1916 on the Eastern Front in Galicia and being invalided as a Vice-Sergeant in the reserve.

Nonetheless, under Nerz the team — initially considered one of the weakest in Europe — gradually developed some consistency towards the end of the 1920s and early 1930s.

In the event, Nerz guided Germany to victories over Belgium and Sweden; a semi-final defeat to Czechoslovakia was followed by a win over the hitherto heavily fancied Austrians to secure a third-place finish.

[2] Due to his Nazi Party membership, he was arrested as a prisoner of war by the British after the Battle of Berlin, then handed over to the occupying Soviet authorities who later interned him in a camp in Sachsenhausen; after four years of imprisonment, he died of cerebral edema on or around 18 April 1949 and was buried in a mass grave on the site of the camp.