Hamburg - Radio reporter Herbert Zimmermann's emotional match commentary in the closing seconds reverberates down the years. "The Hungarians are given a throw-in. It's taken - comes to Bozsik - it's over! Aus! Aus! Aus! Das Spiel ist aus! (The game is over!) Germany are world champions...!"The few black and white clips of the 3-2 win over Hungary in football's 1954 World Cup final are testimony not only to another age - when radio rather than television was the medium to galvanize the masses - but to a defining moment in German sporting history.
The win in Switzerland became known as "the miracle of Berne," returning pride to a people humiliated and devastated by World War II. Players such as captain Fritz Walter entered Germany's footballing hall of fame. Others were to follow, notably Franz Beckenbauer who led the then-West Germany as captain in 1974 and coach in 1990 to two more world titles. The latter, shortly before German unification, prompted "The Kaiser" to predict Germany would "probably be unbeatable for years" - rashly as he was later to admit.
East plus West did not make Germany twice as strong, as the nation was also to learn at the Olympics when the medal tallies soon dwindled and sport had to deal with the legacy of systematic doping. Beckenbauer, however, could claim another major triumph when the nation hosted the 2006 World Cup - 32 years after the tournament took place on West German soil in a nation then divided by the Cold War. With Beckenbauer as organizing committee chief, the event proved to be a catalyst for an outpouring of patriotism and flag-waving.
Since the war, many Germans had felt uncomfortable with overt displays of nationalism, but here was a clear sign that people could now demonstrate uninhibited feelings of national pride without shame. Or, as Britain's Times newspaper saw it after witnessing hundreds of thousands at a street party off Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, Germany had become "a normal nation" once more. "Not since the Third Reich has there been such a public outpouring of national pride, though this bears no comparison to the stage management of the Nazis," the paper wrote. As with 1954's "miracle", a World Cup had offered the country a chance to take another look at itself - and it liked what it saw. "The Germans are identifying themselves with their country and its national colours. I think that's great. And I think it's great that I'm not the only one with a flag on my car," President Horst Koehler said during the tournament.
If the 2006 World Cup was a high point, the 1972 Munich Olympics - also an opportunity to present the friendly and welcoming face of Germany - marked an abject low in the history of the Games. Munich was the second summer Games to be held on German soil since the Nazi-tainted 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes as a result of a Palestinian terrorist attack remains a lasting stain. Members of the Black September group had seized the athletes inside the Olympic village, immediately killing two of them. In a failed rescue attempt at a military airport the remaining Israelis, a German policeman and five of eight terrorists were killed. The Olympic events were briefly suspended but Avery Brundage, the International Olympic Committee president, controversially decided that "the Games must go on.
"Although terrorism was a new dimension, sport had always been used and abused for political prestige, none more so than in communist East Germany, which became a formidable power in Olympic sport. East also famously triumphed over West on the football field at the 1974 World Cup - a result which did not stop West Germany going on to beat the Netherlands in the final in Munich. There have been many other great sporting moments and sporting heroes. Steffi Graf and Boris Becker triggered a tennis boom in the latter 1980s and 1990s. Michael Schumacher did much the same for the popularity of Formula One motor-racing, while East Germany's figure skating queen Katarina Witt was popular on both sides of the divide.
Although rivals before unification, both German teams in fact took part in the Olympics as a united team under one flag between 1956 and 1964. But according to historian Uta Balbier, the East German leadership had soon realized it could circumvent diplomatic isolation by promoting cultural relations. "Sport was the ideal vehicle for this," said Balbier, author of The Cold War on the Cinder Track - German-German Sport from 1950 - 1972. A Political History, in an interview with the Goethe Institute. The state could prove how good it was by the number of medals it won and take pride in the hoisting of its flag and the playing of the anthem at victory ceremonies, she said. East Germany won 409 medals (West Germany: 204) at summer Olympics from 1968 to 1988, despite a boycott in 1984. But it was tarnished glory. Germany is still coping with the aftermath of its state-sponsored doping programme and the exploitation of many innocent young athletes. |
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