LEhmann’s note, Schön’s cap and a piece of grass with a chalk dot from Rome. In addition, the golden yellow leather ball from Bern and the right shoe by Götze, shoe size 43, still with grass marks on the cleat. It is devotional items like these that trigger an inner film in every football fan in Germany, comparing the highlights of German World Cup history with their own experiences. Memories meet Angelesenes, historically authenticated meets emotionally discolored. They are objects to rave about, collected between two book covers. But not only.
In “Germany, your football” Manuel Neukirchner tells a cultural story based on 44 objects, most of which have iconographic value, but some are also quite surprising – and he does not omit the embarrassing, poetic and political. The author is director of the German Football Museum in Dortmund and has an overview of around 1,600 exhibits from which to choose. He settled on 44, divided into as many chapters, arranged chronologically, beginning in 1895.
Paper economy: Goalkeeper Lehmann 2006 on penalties.
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Image: ullstein bild – Team 2 Sportpho
Each of the episodes starts with an illustration or a photo that arouses curiosity – and is followed by a three to four-page story that tells what it’s about in a clear and pointed way. The book can be read like a continuous story, but also invites you to leaf through and browse. If you like, you can start with the alleged heroic stories: Lehmann’s note from the penalty shoot-out against Argentina in the 2006 quarter-finals, which was a big bluff but made the summer fairy tale enjoyable. Rahn’s left leather shoe, which he used to shoot from behind and hit. A goal that gave the Germans a “we are who again” feeling, but did not bring lasting happiness to the goal scorer of the 1954 World Cup final.
More gripping than these well-known anecdotes are the dives into the depths of German football, the often hushed-up moments that Neukirchner appropriately appreciates and classifies. The participant’s medal from the 1912 Olympic Games commemorates Gottfried Fuchs, who was the only German national player to achieve the feat of scoring ten goals in one game – in a 16-0 win over Russia – but who is almost forgotten in German football memory is because he was consistently erased from the annals: Fuchs was a Jew.
As late as 1972, the German Football Association (DFB) replied to a request from Sepp Herberger, who wanted to invite the fox, who had emigrated to Canada, to the inauguration of the Munich Olympic Stadium as an “attempt at reparation” that the association had “no inclination in the sense of your suggestion proceedings”. On the other hand, the DFB had no problem playing the “Tschammerpokal” until 1963. Hans von Tschammer von Osten had been Reichssportführer in Nazi Germany and had donated the 1935 cup competition trophy. The silver pot continued to be used as a DFB trophy – the engraved swastika was covered with a DFB plaque.
On the other hand, the presentation of the 40-piece “Mariposa” coffee service, which the DFB donated to the national players on the occasion of their European Championship title in 1989, can still be explained as a halfway old man’s problem. Oscar Wilde – Neukirchner also quotes him – had written almost a hundred years earlier, in 1895, after the first women’s soccer match in Crouch End near London: “This sport may well be a suitable game for tough girls, but it is hardly a game for subtle boys suitable.”
Manuel Neukirchner: Germany, your football. A cultural history in 44 objects. Edel Sports, Hamburg €24.95
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Image: Noble
Football, art and the book: Peter Handke’s proverbial “Goalman’s Fear of a Penalty Kick” from 1970 found its way into cultural history, as did the manuscript for Toni Schumacher’s “Anpfiff” in 1987, which was to lead to the final whistle of his career – but it was a bestseller became. Karl Lagerfeld’s caricature of tax evader Uli Hoeneß, the magnetophone used to record the Bundesliga bribery scandal in 1971, the plaster cast used to heal Michael Ballack’s injury that shattered his World Cup dreams: Neukirchner goes where it hurts. But it also transports feelings of well-being. The book ends in the 113th minute of the extra time of the 2014 World Cup final, when Götze “does it” – and once again transports the whole lightness of that summer night in Rio.
But history never ends, and neither does German football history. It is continuously updated. With something poetic, embarrassing and political. Chapter 45 could be the “One Love” armband from Qatar’s Manuel Neuer.
