That’s when the big adventure began: Michael Schumacher drove his first full Formula 1 season with Benetton in 1992
The people with money usually can’t drive, and those who can drive don’t have any money.
Gerd Noack, discoverer of Michael Schumacher
Ten years ago I still had a TV connection. December 29, 2013 was one of the days when I couldn’t get out of bed for vague reasons and turned on the television because the books stacked on the floor all seemed boring to me.
As if automatically, I kept flipping through the countless channels that had been broadcasting pure crap to the world indiscriminately and around the clock for at least fifteen years. I zapped from front to back, from front to back, from front to back: a ritual that I used to occasionally distract myself from states of mental unrest, a kind of endless meditative self-deception maneuver (nowadays podcasts are used for this purpose).
Around lunchtime I stopped at one of the so-called news channels that had adopted the ridiculous custom of constantly shouting out “breaking news” from the USA. Breaking news is usually news about a two percent drop in the share price of some sandwich manufacturers, frippery film companies and real estate gangsters, about a light bulb bursting in the White House or about rain starting to fall in Oklahoma.
But this time it was actually breaking news for me. The “People’s Pilot” (Southgerman newspaper) had meant more to me than Flaubert for years. The weekends on which races took place were marked in my calendars and I therefore did not attend any appointments KickerThe table was diligently updated (yes, there was a Formula 1 table), I read the motorsport magazines and even wrote a fairly regular column on the subject for the “Truth” page Tazwhich the wonderful Barbara Häusler and then the no less liberal Michael Ringel always defended against the unsuspecting management team, who apparently sensed a fascist desire or process for world destruction in the automobile competition.
Michael Schumacher had an accident on December 29, 2013 at around 11 a.m. while skiing in the French Alps, in Méribel. There was talk of a helicopter mission, being taken to a clinic and a concussion.
The next day my concerns were confirmed. People would think I was crazy, but I was overcome by a feeling of severe oppression. What did you, Jürgen Roth, have to do with a man who had raced through curves and raced down straights every two weeks for a good two decades?
Michael Schumacher’s life was in danger. He underwent emergency surgery and was put into an artificial coma. Half the world was now reporting from Grenoble, and I had to be part of it.
I wandered into the Rich sports bar, sat down at a table in the corner and stared half-away at one of the screens. The innkeeper, who I knew well, brought me some wheat, looked at me and said: “What’s wrong with you? He’s only human.” He was right and he was wrong.
Thursday evening is on in the ARD from 11.35 p.m. for those suffering from insomnia the five-part, two-hour series BR produced documentary “Being Michael Schumacher” (also available in the ARD-Media library). The title couldn’t have been more stupid, but the calmly composed, touching piece is extremely finely photographed, is a quiet celebration of images, a large-format and yet by no means intrusive painting, a tactfully assembled mosaic of historical evidence and statements from contemporaries that expresses longing after the – I am a Westerner – wonderful eighties and nineties. In the “Golden Age” (Eric Hobsbawm), we were able to devote ourselves to whatever we wanted without any thought, beyond any material needs, we were allowed to be rebels without having to fear sanctions, and we had not even noticed how fragile freedom is.
Sport was something self-sufficient and therefore a happiness-giving mode of experiencing the world, not oppressed and contaminated by racist chatter, lectures, shouting of opinions, hysterical climatic clamoring and green-proton-Nazi transformation terror. Sport was fun, was rock ‘n’ roll, was immense excitement that could be released into childlike joy, was dirt and glamour, waste and beauty, hara-kiri and well-being, exhaustion and exhaustion. Sport was a celebration of man’s ability to cross borders, and that was what “the boy from the Erftkreis” (Anno Hecker) did together with his “victorious Red Army” (Thomas Hüetlin, 2004 in Spiegel), the Scuderia Ferrari, was able to put into action.
Im Deutschlandfunk I was able to write a nine-minute eulogy for the commander-in-chief of the men from Maranello, Jean Todt. I was able to make a contribution about what Michael Schumacher was doing in the worst chicanery behind the wheel without having to get permission beforehand. After my text “Braking is art” was broadcast on the Adenauer station, Hermann Gremliza called me and asked if the thing would be in the next one Concrete may appear. Unfortunately I had to turn him down; I had already sent the hymn to him Freitag passed on.
From 1997 onwards the beautiful woman and I went to Spa every year. We made friends with craftsmen, with insurance agents, with pot-smoking anarchists and crazy Finns. We camped in the Belgian mud. In the morning we sat on a monkey rock in the Ardennes, drank canned beer and became beside ourselves when the divine from Kerpen whipped his vehicle, the glowing red reclining statue, through the ninety-degree angle of the bus stop in front of our eyes. The boy from the go-kart track, who was thrown onto a stage by chance, which he then redesigned like a Michelangelo.
Michael Schumacher was “a diabolical genius” (comment on YouTube), born from the Rhenish lower middle class. He gave us great moments. He was a worker and a “cracking bloke,” as the British commentator legend Murray Walker said, and he was “the best of all time” (Walker), a badass, a “rioter” (Martin Brundle) and a sensitive character, “extraordinary polite and helpful” (Walker), grateful and loyal.
I miss Sundays with Michael Schumacher. I miss the church services in the cathedrals erected by the hypnotic sound of the hellishly screaming V10 engines. I miss Michael Schumacher’s “mindblowing” (Brundle), his majestic performances (Barcelona 1996, Spa 1998, Malaysia and Suzuka 2001 and so on), and if you want to get a feel for the incredible violent grace of the Volant artist Michael Schumacher, I recommend this Cruising on YouTube: “Schumacher best lap ever”, “Ferrari F2004 V10 ex Schumacher Extreme Sound at Monza Curcuit”, “Fiorano F1 Testing 2004” et cetera.
I’m now drinking two or three cheroots of Rubinette brandy from the Fahner family fruit-growing business in Igensdorf in Franconian Switzerland. My friend Udo R. gave me this distilling work of art in a 200 milliliter bottle before Christmas. Otherwise the painful memories cannot be endured.
