If you echo the content of $row[8], I would expect you will find something like:
200406
timestamp (6) will only show
4 digit year
02 digit month
PHP date() works from a unix timestamp
date("d.m.Y", 200406)
would show the date as 200406 seconds after 1 Jan 1970 -- a little over 2 days worth of seconds
You SHOULD be getting 3.1.1970. That you are getting 1.1.1970 suggests that $row[8] is null.
My suggestion would be to change the column definition to timestamp 8: example 20040617
Then format the date using MySQL
SELECT DATE_FORMAT(myTimestamp, '%d.%m.%Y')
FROM myTable
which will return the value as a string in the format you desire.