TUM Alumnus Florian Weber enjoys returning to the TUM Campus in the Olympiapark time and again. Twenty-five years ago, he completed his diploma in sports science here and in 2026 celebrates his silver diploma anniversary. Today he is primarily a musician and drummer with the band Sportfreunde Stiller (Photo: Martina Bogdahn/TUM).
Sport and music
Which came first — sport or music? “Sport, always sport,” says the TUM Alumnus. He joined a gymnastics club in his hometown of Schrobenhausen at the age of two. That early start also proved a stroke of luck for his later studies at TUM, where gymnastics on the apparatus tripped up more than a few of his fellow students. His childhood and youth were also filled with swimming, football, basketball, and tennis. “I really did go straight from the football pitch to the basketball court,” he recalls. He excelled at all of them: Upper Bavarian swimming champion here, third place at the Bavarian Basketball Championships there. Music came along quickly too: at six, at his mother’s wish, he started learning piano, switching to drums at nine. Even so, making music remained more of a background pursuit for a while.
Sport or art?
“At secondary school, art and sport were what mattered to me — those were the subjects I was strong in,” he says in the interview. After his Abitur, he first applied to art school, then decided to study at TUM — something a PE teacher had advised him early on: “Flo, you have to study sport, that’s your thing. That’s where you’ll make friends for life,” Florian Weber quotes, adding with the knowing smile of someone who has lived it: “And that’s exactly how it turned out.”
“I Owe My Music Career Almost Entirely to Studying Sport Here at TUM”
The beginnings of Sportfreunde Stiller
On the sports science winter excursion in Bruneck, Peter Brugger had brought along music by the Smashing Pumpkins — a story the two enjoy telling often: how they lay in their pension room, listening to music, discovered they shared the same taste, and found out that both of them also played drums. “Ten minutes later the idea was in the room that we could make music together sometime — the rest is history.” They found a bassist and named their band “Stiller” — after their former football coach Hans Stiller from Germering. When a Hamburg band of the same name asserted rights to the name, they changed it to “Sportfreunde Stiller” — a nod to their love of sport and their friendship, both defining elements of their shared story, while also keeping their coach’s name.
It took a little while longer before the band really gained momentum. Studies came first, and a career as a musician was not yet on Florian Weber’s mind. In his advanced studies he specialized in the area of prevention and rehabilitation; “working with competitive athletes” was something he could well have imagined. As the band grew increasingly successful, his professional ideas began to shift: he recalls an evening when he walked home with a 1,000-Mark note in his pocket and the thought first crossed his mind that music might perhaps also become a source of income — without yet imagining that “the band would one day become so big.”
Goal: the diploma
They took their studies seriously — “and nothing was handed to us here,” as Florian Weber emphasizes. Mornings in the seminar room, afternoons in practical sports training sessions, evenings rehearsing on stage or in a studio in Spain. For individual seminars they flew back to Germany, yet still missed courses they then had to make up. Peter Brugger eventually switched to a teaching degree at LMU and then focused exclusively on the band. Florian Weber held firm to completing his diploma: “It was always clear to me: I want to finish my degree and say thank you to my father for making my studies possible.”
Currently celebrating their 30th anniversary, the band Sportfreunde Stiller has just released their ninth album, "Happy Birthday!". TUM Alumnus Florian Weber has been their drummer since the very beginning and loves above all the ever-new and powerful nature of the creative process (Photo: Ingo Pertramer/Sportfreunde Stiller).
“I would study sport at TUM again without hesitation.”
If studying today were the same as it was back then, he reflects, he would enroll at TUM again without hesitation: “It was the best decision to study sport here,” he says, and explains: “In sports studies, a close bond forms between people through the practical sessions and shared excursions. In sports like rowing or climbing, you have to be able to rely on each other completely — that builds trust and is just, well, simply unforgettable.”
Community and trust
Once again Florian Weber comes back to the theme of togetherness — in sport as in music. “The interpersonal is in every one of our lyrics, everywhere,” he says. He feels at home in community, among people: in family and among friends, in deep conversations that can happen in the most relaxed of moods. “It’s so important, when you can rely on each other in your circle of friends and truly let everything be.” That is also what makes Sportfreunde Stiller special — that despite their different characters, they celebrate being together, take to stages collectively and happily by unconventional means, but also speak openly with one another and address things early when something isn’t right. That is something they learned above all during their long band hiatus between 2017 and 2020.
The band’s 30-year history shows that they have always needed those recovery phases: full throttle, then braking, then acceleration. Florian Weber draws the analogy to sport: “It’s actually the principle of supercompensation. First a stimulus, then a rest, then carry on. That way you can keep improving, but you also sometimes need complete recovery.” For as passionately as all three pursue their music, it is also genuinely demanding work that they approach with great intensity.
Making music, painting, writing novels
“Yes, it takes effort, no question, but it is passion,” says the TUM Alumnus. He looks back on his life with great satisfaction: “I get to earn money from my passion” — and through that, pursue other hobbies too. Alongside sport, these include painting, reading widely, and writing — not only song lyrics: the musician has already published three novels. All passion, as he puts it, “the free engagement with art, because I get to decide what I sing about and what I write about.” That is something he appreciates deeply, and he is grateful for the “very free life that I get to live.”
For the years ahead, his wish is “that they all stay physically fit enough to keep playing concerts.” That, for him, is the essence of making music: “Making contact with people, playing music in one big embrace — we feel that at every concert. Whether we’re standing in front of 200 people or 20,000, that’s what it’s all about.” People coming together, celebrating in the best sense of the word, and connecting with one another: “Getting out and joining up. That’s what it’s about.” Happily for another 30 years — at least.
At DOK.fest 2026, Sportfreunde Stiller celebrated the world premiere of the documentary film "Sportfreunde Stiller – Mit dem Herz in der Hand" by Thorsten Berrar. The film is available in the ARD Mediathek and features TUM Alumnus Florian Weber at the new TUM Sports Campus, where he recounts how he and Peter first got to know each other during their foundation studies (Ronny Heine/DOK.fest München).
TUM Alumnus Florian Weber, Sportfreunde Stiller, at the TUM Campus in the Olympiapark, Zentraler Hochschulsport München (ZHS) (Photo: Martina Bogdahn/TUM).
Diploma in Sports Science 2001
Florian Weber has been active in sport since the age of two, and for a long time gave sport priority over music. After his Abitur in Schrobenhausen, he studied sports science at TUM, graduating with a diploma. In his third semester he got to know Peter Brugger more closely — they listened to the same music and shortly afterwards began making music together. What started as a first concert — which would remain the only one for the band Endkrass — became Sportfreunde Stiller, and the passionate sportsman became an equally passionate musician.
Alongside this, the TUM Alumnus is also active as a novelist and visual artist. He lives with his family in Munich and loves spending plenty of quality time with family and friends.
