Bert Trautmann , who has died aged 89, became the hero of the 1956 FA Cup Final when, in one of the most famous episodes in the history of the competition, he defied the pain of an injury to continue in goal for Manchester City and clinch the trophy, unaware that he had broken his neck.
The esteem in which Trautmann was held in the blue half of Manchester, and indeed across English football, was all the more remarkable given that he had arrived in Britain 11 years before as a prisoner-of-war — and one regarded by the authorities as a hard-bitten Nazi because of his membership of an elite squad of Luftwaffe paratroops.
Trautmann had in fact lost the zeal that made him a sporting champion in the Hitler Youth after witnessing a massacre of civilians by the SS in occupied Russia, but he remained spiky and competitive. As a PoW he persuaded the camp authorities to let the inmates form a football team, which took on local sides in Lancashire as post-war tensions eased.
He converted from centre half to goalkeeper after taking a knock in one game and refusing to go off. After being signed by non-League St Helen’s Town, in 1949 he went to Manchester City, who were seeking a replacement for the great England international Frank Swift.
The club’s choice, just four years after the war, was controversial, and Trautmann was shocked by the hate mail he received; but the boos and anti-German chants turned to cheers as he excelled on the pitch. He made his mark as a keeper who dominated the penalty area, fearlessly snuffing out threats, instead of staying on his line.
City had reached the 1956 Cup Final — Trautmann’s second — after a series of narrow victories, while their opponents, Birmingham City, had romped to Wembley despite having been drawn away in each round. The Manchester side had also been hit by injury, and were forced to recall their out-of-favour playmaker Don Revie from the reserves.
In the event, Revie proved the match winner — by the 70th minute a string of visionary passes from him had given City a 3-1 lead. But with 16 minutes remaining, Birmingham’s Peter Murphy was presented with a chance.
Out rushed Trautmann (newly voted Footballer of the Year) and, with his customary courage, dived at Murphy’s feet. He succeeded in clutching the ball, but could not prevent his head colliding with Murphy’s leg. Trautmann was left dazed and reeling, but was determined to play on. As he rose to his feet after treatment, the crowd broke into For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow.
At the end of the game, Trautmann was helped up the steps to collect his winner’s medal, all the while rubbing his “stiff neck”. He joined the team on the balcony of Manchester Town Hall as the crowd chanted: “We want Bert!”
Four days later his persistent headache forced him to attend a hospital, where X-rays revealed a fracture. The examining doctor told Trautmann that just one jolt of the bus back from Wembley could have killed him. He was forced to spend five months encased in plaster from head to hips, and thereafter played in a protective cap.
Yet Trautmann won back his place in the City team, and when he retired in 1964 (having made 545 appearances) the great names of football — Charlton, Law, Matthews, Finney — turned out for his testimonial match, in front of a crowd of 47,000 cheering him to the rafters. When the Inland Revenue told him to pay tax on the proceeds, he characteristically told them to get lost.
Bernhard Carl Trautmann was born in Bremen, Germany, on October 22 1923, the elder son of a chemical loader at the docks. He grew up during the hyperinflationary period of the Weimar Republic, and as a teenager joined the Hitler Youth. At 17 he volunteered for the Luftwaffe as a communications specialist, but failed his code exams.
When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, Trautmann was maintaining military vehicles; and during a pause in hostilities, he disabled a staff car as a prank so that he and some friends could go foraging once the officers had found another vehicle. When sand was found in the engine, Trautmann was convicted of sabotage and sentenced to nine months in a squalid former Soviet prison at Zhitomir. Providentially, his appendix burst and after recovering from the operation he was allowed to rejoin his unit.
Early in 1942 he volunteered for the Fallschirmjäger, the Luftwaffe’s crack paratroops. He spent the next two years in a small group fighting the increasingly active Soviet partisans — once narrowly escaping capture — as the German advance turned into a slow and bloody retreat.
Shortly before D-Day Trautmann was transferred to France to train new recruits. He fought in several desperate delaying actions across France, and then at Arnhem; by now he had been awarded two Iron Crosses and promoted to corporal.
While regrouping in the German town of Kleve, he was buried alive for three days when the Allies bombed a school where his unit was billeted; most of his comrades were killed.
In the confusion that preceded the fall of the Reich, Trautmann decided to make for Bremen. Briefly held by the Americans, he was finally taken prisoner by a British signals unit whose soldiers greeted him with: “Hello Fritz, would you like a cup of tea?” His lifelong love affair with Britain began at that moment.
Trautmann was dispatched to a PoW camp at Ashton-in-Makerfield, near Wigan, where the government (in contravention of the Geneva Convention) was using German labour to help rebuild Britain. His athleticism in the camp’s football team (when he was not working with a bomb disposal unit) attracted attention, and before long he was turning out for St Helen’s Town, whose club secretary Jack Friar took him under his wing.
His tenacious performances put hundreds on the gate, and soon attracted talent scouts. Friar — soon also to become his father-in-law — negotiated with Burnley, but City made an offer and Trautmann signed for them.
The club’s decision to recruit him inevitably aroused passions in Manchester, with its large Jewish community. Trautmann was subjected to much abuse until the city’s chief rabbi generously gave him his blessing to play. His nationality aside, he also had to overcome the prejudice of City fans who believed that no one could adequately replace Swift. The German’s cause was not helped when, in his first season at Maine Road, City were relegated to the Second Division.
Gradually, however, the blond Trautmann — who stood 6ft 2in tall and weighed almost 14st — began to win the affection and respect of fans and fellow players alike. His wholehearted commitment to the team, as well as his shot-stopping powers, led some observers to rate him not merely a better keeper than the more flamboyant Swift, but almost as good as Lev Yashin, the Russian who was then perhaps the best yet seen.
Bobby Charlton, for one, considered Trautmann responsible for the finest save he had ever witnessed. Trautmann was picked twice for the Football League representative side, but never won an international cap, as West Germany then had a policy of not selecting those who played abroad.
Although City’s league record was indifferent (their best seasons with Trautmann came in 1951, when they were runners-up in the Second Division, and in 1956, when they finished fourth in the top flight), his skills came into their own in close-fought, one-off cup matches. In 1955 City reached the Cup Final, but were forced to play most of the match with 10 men after Jimmy Meadows was injured. Their opponents, Newcastle, eventually won 3-1, but it was only Trautmann’s agility that had kept City in the game.
The following year saw both the zenith and nadir of Trautmann’s fortunes. A month after his heroics in the Cup Final, his six-year-old son was killed while crossing the road. Trautmann struggled to come to terms with his loss, which in time led to the break-up of his marriage.
Trautmann considered quitting football after leaving City, but in 1966 he became manager of Stockport County. The team won promotion to the Third Division and the gates rose, but then he had a row with the chairman and walked out. Thereafter he found it hard to get work within the sport and, angry and despairing, sparked a police hunt when he disappeared from home in 1971. But he turned up safe, and soon afterwards took a post with the German FA, pioneering soccer in developing countries.
Over the years he coached in Burma (taking its team to the 1972 Munich Olympics), Tanzania, Liberia, Pakistan and North Yemen. But there was always a welcome for him in Lancashire.
“My education only began the day I arrived in England,” Trautmann recalled. “People were so kind and decent, they didn’t see an enemy prisoner, they saw a human being. The British made me what I am ... When I visit Germany, they say to me: 'Be honest, you’re English through and through’. And I’m mighty proud so to consider myself. I come back four or five times a year and always think 'Great, I’m home.’”
In 2000 the Football League voted Trautmann one of its 100 Players of the Century, and in 2004 he was appointed OBE for his work encouraging Anglo-German relations. Days later he was presented to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Berlin Sinfonia, where 66 years earlier he had been honoured by Hitler’s sports minister for coming second in athletics in the whole of the Reich.
Trautmann lived for a time in Germany, then retired to Spain, where he owned a vineyard near Valencia. He followed the Premiership on satellite television, and was a regular visitor to Maine Road and later the City of Manchester Stadium.
He suffered no lasting effects from his broken neck, though from time to time he would feel a twinge whenever he looked sharp left while riding his bicycle.
Bert Trautmann married Margaret Friar in 1950. His second marriage, to Ursula von der Heyde, also broke down. He retired to Spain with his third wife, Marlis, who survives him. He had two other sons by his first marriage, and a daughter from an earlier relationship with Marion Greenhall.
Bert Trautmann, born October 22 1923, died July 19 2013
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