Film commemorates man
who resurrected Bayern Munich
By Patrick Z. McGavin
CHICAGO -- History and sport lyrically fused together in a film that depicted a touching act of reconciliation and remembrance Feb. 1 at the DANK Haus, a German-American cultural arts center in Lincoln Square.
The Chicago chapter of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) presented a special screening of “Kurt Landauer,” a German-language film named for the Jewish president of famed FC Bayern Munich, Germany’s greatest club team. The film, subtitled “A Life for Football,” recounts how Landauer returned from exile in Switzerland after World War II to a physically decimated, war-torn Munich. Through his guile, bravery and organizational skill, Landauer resurrected the city’s proud soccer club.
The movie’s dominant theme is reconciliation of the past and present, underscoring a country brought to the brink by the institutional and genocidal horrors of the Third Reich. Directed by the Swiss-born Hans Steinbichler, the movie oscillates between a documentary black and white exactitude to a subdued color palette that captures the period detail and historical reconstruction. A prologue set in 1932 establishes the club’s greatest early moment -- a 2-0 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt for its groundbreaking first national championship.
The club was founded at the turn of the 20th century. Its prominence was interrupted by the rise of Hitler and the National Socialists. Landauer and Bayern Munich’s coach Richard Kohn were Jewish, making their positions with the club untenable.
Landauer, played in the film by the superb Bavarian actor Josef Bierbichler, was a man of wealth and privilege before World War II who became ostensibly stateless. The movie recreates one of the greatest moments for the club -- a defiant act of war-time resistance. During a friendly scheduled to boost morale for Germany, the players interrupted the game to applaud Landauer, who was in the stands as a very public witness. FC Bayern continues to be known for its social inclusion and anti-racism.
The narrative jumps to 1947 and concerns Landauer’s effort to reclaim the club’s past soccer glory. He undertook his quest despite a collapsed country with bombed-out landscapes and the loss of a majority of the team’s greatest players, many of them Jews, who were killed during the war.
Bierbichler gives a thrilling, commanding physical performance, weary and emotionally numb, as a man haunted by the past though transfixed by new possibilities. The actor is best-known in this country for his superb work with the celebrated Austrian director Michael Haneke in films like “Code Unknown,” and the Academy-award nominated “The White Ribbon,” which won the most important prize in international cinema, the Palme d’Or, for best film at the 2009 Cannes Film festival.
The reconciliation theme also extended to the memory of Gerry Franks, a board member of the AJC, who passed away last year. Many of his family members and relatives were present at the screening and were given a customized FC Bayern jersey signed by all the current players.
A New York-based advocacy group, AJC has 22 regional offices including its Chicago outpost in the Loop. Franks, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Berlin, in 1936. He emigrated to Chicago after the war. According to Amy Miller, the assistant director of international affairs and communications with the AJC, Franks repudiated the country and refused to have any direct liaison with Germany.
“He came here when he was 15 years old, and he originally did not want anything to do with Germany,” Miller said. “He returned to Germany on a mission with AJC in 1998, and he was overwhelmed by the kindness of everybody he met there. It helped him realize the importance of repairing these ties. He became very important in helping establish ties between the (Chicago) Jewish community and Germany.”
Miller moderated a post-screening discussion and was joined by Allan Reich, an AJC Chicago board member and Herbert Quelle, the consul general of Germany to the Midwest. The discussion, intelligent and wide-ranging, addressed the historical accuracy of the movie’s rendering of post-war Munich, the country’s economic recovery, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the country’s reunification in 1990.
“Reconciliation is not just about making nice or forgetting about the past,” Miller said. “It’s about being honest about the past. I appreciated the film (dealt with) issues that were difficult but necessary. This is something we don’t want to take for granted, German and Jewish ties. They are strong, because we put an effort into it on both sides.
“That was something we could celebrate tonight.”
Soccer played a crucial role in the country’s moral recovery according to Benno Ruwe, the head of partnerships of FC Bayern Munich (Americas).
“From our point of view, the movie really showed how soccer is a force for getting people back together again, of how soccer and sport in general was very helpful to overcome the difficulty of a very dark period of time,” Ruwe said. “The film shows how difficult it was after the Second World War to bring people back together. All over the world soccer and sport helps people to overcome their differences and difficulties.
“That is the strong message for us.”
After World War II, Germany was cleaved into two parts, the democratic West and the Soviet satellite state East. In 1954, West Germany defeated Hungary 3-2 in Bern, Switzerland, to capture the World Cup. The Berlin Wall, the stark symbolic line of demarcation between the two countries, stood for nearly three decades until it fell in November 1989. The 1990 World Cup featured the the last appearance for West Germany which defeated Argentina 1-0 in Rome in the championship match.
“Soccer is far and away the number one sport in Germany,” Ruwe said. “Everyone is talking soccer, playing soccer. That helps obviously because the kids are specializing in soccer at an early age. It’s the unifying sport in our country. It has helped us overcome the difficulties after the Second World War. Winning in 1990, after the Wall came down, also really helped the country and to help raise soccer in our county.”
FC Bayern Munich is Germany’s leading club program, the primary supply for the reigning World Cup champions that defeated Argentina in Brazil in 2014. They are five-time European Cup champions, the most recent title came in the 2012-13 campaign.
The club also has one of the best youth training programs in the world. The youth academy team has trained and developed many of the leading young talents in Europe, including Owen Hargreaves, Thomas Hitzlsperger, Philipp Lahm and Thomas Muller.
The academy is made up of 10 teams.
“In Germany, the nice thing about having the club level is that school and club and sport are separated from each other.,” Ruwe said. “You are not only playing with kids from your own school, but you are sometimes playing with kids who come from a different socio-economic background. It’s really merit based on whether you can play on a team. That’s how the teams progress and get better. You get kids from all over the place, and are not bound to one school district.
“It helps clubs strive, and it set us apart.”
Ruwe also typifies the cosmopolitan, culturally diverse appeal of the club. FC Bayern balances its rabid home base fan with a wide-ranging group of aficionados ranging from Pope Benedict to tennis great Boris Becker and Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko.
“We have fans from all over the world,” Ruwe said. “I personally come from Lower Saxony, in the northwest of Germany, and I grew up as a Bayern fan, even though it is totally distant from where the club is. It’s definitely a thing that you support teams from other pockets of the country.”
As the movie showed, Kurt Landauer’s life and career took unaccountable turns. His story resonates today. The movie mediates on the very themes central to the moment, questions of identity and nationality. The question of approachment was threaded throughout the night, in the stories of Landauer and Gerry Franks.
“We advocate for the issues that are important to our community, like combating anti-Semitism,” Amy Miller said. “But we also listen, and we do interfaith work and the movie ties into that nicely. You can have relationships with governments, but it is really people to people.”
Kurt Landauer — A Life for Football
Running time: 90 minutes. Directed by Hans Steinbichler. Written by Dirk Kamper. Produced by Mark Horyna, Daniel Mann, Michael Souvignier. Music by Alex Komlew. Cinematography by Bella Halben. Edited by Wolfgang Weigl. Production design by Volker Schafer. With Josef Bierbichler (Kurt Landauer), Jeannette Hain (Maria Baumann), Herbert Knaup (Sigi Hermann), Andreas Lust (Conny Heidkamp), Andrea Wenzl (Inge Streicher), Eisi Gulp (Radschuweit).
Film available at:
http://documentary.globalmovie.us/play.php?movie=tt3177720=DN -- requires registration and possible fee.
who resurrected Bayern Munich
By Patrick Z. McGavin
CHICAGO -- History and sport lyrically fused together in a film that depicted a touching act of reconciliation and remembrance Feb. 1 at the DANK Haus, a German-American cultural arts center in Lincoln Square.
The Chicago chapter of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) presented a special screening of “Kurt Landauer,” a German-language film named for the Jewish president of famed FC Bayern Munich, Germany’s greatest club team. The film, subtitled “A Life for Football,” recounts how Landauer returned from exile in Switzerland after World War II to a physically decimated, war-torn Munich. Through his guile, bravery and organizational skill, Landauer resurrected the city’s proud soccer club.
The movie’s dominant theme is reconciliation of the past and present, underscoring a country brought to the brink by the institutional and genocidal horrors of the Third Reich. Directed by the Swiss-born Hans Steinbichler, the movie oscillates between a documentary black and white exactitude to a subdued color palette that captures the period detail and historical reconstruction. A prologue set in 1932 establishes the club’s greatest early moment -- a 2-0 victory over Eintracht Frankfurt for its groundbreaking first national championship.
The club was founded at the turn of the 20th century. Its prominence was interrupted by the rise of Hitler and the National Socialists. Landauer and Bayern Munich’s coach Richard Kohn were Jewish, making their positions with the club untenable.
Landauer, played in the film by the superb Bavarian actor Josef Bierbichler, was a man of wealth and privilege before World War II who became ostensibly stateless. The movie recreates one of the greatest moments for the club -- a defiant act of war-time resistance. During a friendly scheduled to boost morale for Germany, the players interrupted the game to applaud Landauer, who was in the stands as a very public witness. FC Bayern continues to be known for its social inclusion and anti-racism.
The narrative jumps to 1947 and concerns Landauer’s effort to reclaim the club’s past soccer glory. He undertook his quest despite a collapsed country with bombed-out landscapes and the loss of a majority of the team’s greatest players, many of them Jews, who were killed during the war.
Bierbichler gives a thrilling, commanding physical performance, weary and emotionally numb, as a man haunted by the past though transfixed by new possibilities. The actor is best-known in this country for his superb work with the celebrated Austrian director Michael Haneke in films like “Code Unknown,” and the Academy-award nominated “The White Ribbon,” which won the most important prize in international cinema, the Palme d’Or, for best film at the 2009 Cannes Film festival.
The reconciliation theme also extended to the memory of Gerry Franks, a board member of the AJC, who passed away last year. Many of his family members and relatives were present at the screening and were given a customized FC Bayern jersey signed by all the current players.
A New York-based advocacy group, AJC has 22 regional offices including its Chicago outpost in the Loop. Franks, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Berlin, in 1936. He emigrated to Chicago after the war. According to Amy Miller, the assistant director of international affairs and communications with the AJC, Franks repudiated the country and refused to have any direct liaison with Germany.
“He came here when he was 15 years old, and he originally did not want anything to do with Germany,” Miller said. “He returned to Germany on a mission with AJC in 1998, and he was overwhelmed by the kindness of everybody he met there. It helped him realize the importance of repairing these ties. He became very important in helping establish ties between the (Chicago) Jewish community and Germany.”
Miller moderated a post-screening discussion and was joined by Allan Reich, an AJC Chicago board member and Herbert Quelle, the consul general of Germany to the Midwest. The discussion, intelligent and wide-ranging, addressed the historical accuracy of the movie’s rendering of post-war Munich, the country’s economic recovery, the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the country’s reunification in 1990.
“Reconciliation is not just about making nice or forgetting about the past,” Miller said. “It’s about being honest about the past. I appreciated the film (dealt with) issues that were difficult but necessary. This is something we don’t want to take for granted, German and Jewish ties. They are strong, because we put an effort into it on both sides.
“That was something we could celebrate tonight.”
Soccer played a crucial role in the country’s moral recovery according to Benno Ruwe, the head of partnerships of FC Bayern Munich (Americas).
“From our point of view, the movie really showed how soccer is a force for getting people back together again, of how soccer and sport in general was very helpful to overcome the difficulty of a very dark period of time,” Ruwe said. “The film shows how difficult it was after the Second World War to bring people back together. All over the world soccer and sport helps people to overcome their differences and difficulties.
“That is the strong message for us.”
After World War II, Germany was cleaved into two parts, the democratic West and the Soviet satellite state East. In 1954, West Germany defeated Hungary 3-2 in Bern, Switzerland, to capture the World Cup. The Berlin Wall, the stark symbolic line of demarcation between the two countries, stood for nearly three decades until it fell in November 1989. The 1990 World Cup featured the the last appearance for West Germany which defeated Argentina 1-0 in Rome in the championship match.
“Soccer is far and away the number one sport in Germany,” Ruwe said. “Everyone is talking soccer, playing soccer. That helps obviously because the kids are specializing in soccer at an early age. It’s the unifying sport in our country. It has helped us overcome the difficulties after the Second World War. Winning in 1990, after the Wall came down, also really helped the country and to help raise soccer in our county.”
FC Bayern Munich is Germany’s leading club program, the primary supply for the reigning World Cup champions that defeated Argentina in Brazil in 2014. They are five-time European Cup champions, the most recent title came in the 2012-13 campaign.
The club also has one of the best youth training programs in the world. The youth academy team has trained and developed many of the leading young talents in Europe, including Owen Hargreaves, Thomas Hitzlsperger, Philipp Lahm and Thomas Muller.
The academy is made up of 10 teams.
“In Germany, the nice thing about having the club level is that school and club and sport are separated from each other.,” Ruwe said. “You are not only playing with kids from your own school, but you are sometimes playing with kids who come from a different socio-economic background. It’s really merit based on whether you can play on a team. That’s how the teams progress and get better. You get kids from all over the place, and are not bound to one school district.
“It helps clubs strive, and it set us apart.”
Ruwe also typifies the cosmopolitan, culturally diverse appeal of the club. FC Bayern balances its rabid home base fan with a wide-ranging group of aficionados ranging from Pope Benedict to tennis great Boris Becker and Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko.
“We have fans from all over the world,” Ruwe said. “I personally come from Lower Saxony, in the northwest of Germany, and I grew up as a Bayern fan, even though it is totally distant from where the club is. It’s definitely a thing that you support teams from other pockets of the country.”
As the movie showed, Kurt Landauer’s life and career took unaccountable turns. His story resonates today. The movie mediates on the very themes central to the moment, questions of identity and nationality. The question of approachment was threaded throughout the night, in the stories of Landauer and Gerry Franks.
“We advocate for the issues that are important to our community, like combating anti-Semitism,” Amy Miller said. “But we also listen, and we do interfaith work and the movie ties into that nicely. You can have relationships with governments, but it is really people to people.”
Kurt Landauer — A Life for Football
Running time: 90 minutes. Directed by Hans Steinbichler. Written by Dirk Kamper. Produced by Mark Horyna, Daniel Mann, Michael Souvignier. Music by Alex Komlew. Cinematography by Bella Halben. Edited by Wolfgang Weigl. Production design by Volker Schafer. With Josef Bierbichler (Kurt Landauer), Jeannette Hain (Maria Baumann), Herbert Knaup (Sigi Hermann), Andreas Lust (Conny Heidkamp), Andrea Wenzl (Inge Streicher), Eisi Gulp (Radschuweit).
Film available at:
http://documentary.globalmovie.us/play.php?movie=tt3177720=DN -- requires registration and possible fee.