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Football's greatest story: How ex-Nazi became a hero at Manchester City
He was the legendary Manchester City goalkeeper who helped to take his team to victory in the 1956 FA Cup final, famously playing on even after he broke his neck in the last 17 minutes. Decades later, Bert Trautmann expected the highest of standards both on and off the pitch. He chastised some of his successors for not dressing appropriately at an official reception and criticised the eye-watering fees earned by the beautiful game’s biggest stars, his son has recalled.
Mark Trautmann, 58, said that his father, who was “always immaculately turned out”, was dismayed when some of Manchester City’s players arrived at a charity event in jeans and T-shirts, telling them: “You represent the club, you have a standard to maintain.”
His son remembers joking with him: “ ‘Dad, their jeans probably cost more than your suit’. He said: ‘That’s not the point, they’re representing the club.’ That’s where times have changed.”
Mark also recalled his father’s bewilderment over the wages earned by modern stars: “[He’d say], ‘I bet you wish I was playing now …’ He was only on about £11 a week. He only got £15, I think, for the final … When they weren’t playing, the pay went down.”
In 2010, Manchester City striker Carlos Tevez reportedly earned more than £250,000 a week, making him the first £1 million-a-month footballer.
Trautmann’s son spoke to The Sunday Telegraph ahead of last week’s premiere of The Keeper, a feature film in which his father – who died in 2013 – is played by David Kross, who starred in Stephen Daldry’s Oscar-nominated The Reader.
The film, released in cinemas on April 5, tells the extraordinary story of a former Nazi paratrooper who was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery before being captured by the British and becoming a hero of English football. Considered one of the finest-ever goalkeepers, he was revered for his acrobatic athleticism.
The film’s writer-director, Marcus Rosenmuller, described it as a story of reconciliation: “The former enemy who becomes the hero of a nation.” Trautmann overcame deep resentment to his signing by Manchester City in 1949, only four years after the war.
Former servicemen and Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were among thousands who took to the streets to protest against the signing of a “Nazi”, who fought for Germany on the Russian front and in Western Europe. Trautmann was an ardent member of the Hitler Youth, later training its recruits, and witnessing a massacre of civilians by SS death squads.
Manchester had been heavily bombed during the war. But the city’s communal rabbi, Alexander Altmann, who himself fled the Nazis, argued that an individual should not be punished for his country’s sins. Trautmann married an Englishwoman, Margaret Friar, and eventually secured a place in English football folklore. In 2004, the Queen awarded him the OBE for his commitment to the game and his dedication to Anglo-German relations.
Chris Curling, producer of The Keeper, said: “It is a story about an ex-Nazi and a young British woman and the obstacles they have to overcome in their life together – him coming to terms with what Hitler and the Nazis did; she overcoming the prejudice of her mates and the feelings of her parents about her marrying an ex-Nazi.”
Trautmann once recalled in an interview: “Hitler’s was a dictatorial regime. You got your orders and you followed them. If you didn’t, you were shot.”
He knew that a film was being planned during his lifetime. In 2009, he spent a week being interviewed by Rosenmuller, who sensed his “shame” over Germany’s wartime past.
Mark Trautmann, a former RAF vehicle technician, said that his father was reluctant to talk about the war: “One of my last tours was at a German base. I was accommodated in a house with my family in Weeze in 1996 … [My father] said, ‘It’s quite ironic’. When he was captured, he was kept at Weeze.”
Nationalism meant little to him. His son said: “If he ever watched a game on television, I’d say to him, ‘Who would you want to win?’ He’d say, ‘I don’t care who wins, as long as I watch a good football game’.”
It was perhaps his military training, Mark believes, that helped his father as a sportsman. He described him as a modest man whose “feet were firmly on the ground”, playing down his 1956 victory and his bravery over his broken neck: “Because of the adrenalin in his body, he blocked the pain out … He said he just carried on [as] he thought it was a sprain. He didn’t know how serious it was at all.”
Mark did not inherit his father’s footballing prowess, but will never forget their “knockabout in the back garden” with a ball.