Auf den Tod eines Fußballspielers
Friedrich Torberg (1939)
Er war ein Kind aus Favoriten
und hieß Matthias Sindelar.
Er stand auf grünem Platz inmitten,
weil er ein Mittelstürmer war
Er spielte Fußball, und er wußte
vom Leben außerdem nicht viel.
Er lebte, weil er leben mußte
vom Fußballspiel fürs Fußballspiel.
Er spielte Fußball wie kein zweiter,
er stak voll Witz und Phantasie.
Er spielte lässig, leicht und heiter,
er spielte stets, er kämpfte nie.
Er warf den blonden Schopf zur Seite,
ließ seinen Herrgott gütig sein,
und stürmte durch die grüne Weite
und manchmal bis ins Tor hinein.
Es jubelte die Hohe Warte,
der Prater und das Stadion,
wenn er den Gegner lächelnd narrte
und zog ihm flinken Laufs davon.
Bis eines Tages ein andrer Gegner
ihm jählings in die Quere trat,
ein fremd und furchtbar überlegener,
vor dem’s nicht Regel gab noch Rat.
Von einem einzigen harten Tritte
fand sich der Spieler Sindelar
verstoßen aus des Planes Mitte
weil das die neue Ordnung war.
Ein Weilchen stand er noch daneben,
bevor er abging und nachhaus.
Im Fußballspiel, ganz wie im Leben,
war’s mit der Wiener Schule aus.
Er war gewohnt zu kombinieren,
und kombinierte manchen Tag.
Sein Ãœberblick ließ ihn erspüren,
daß seine Chance im Gashahn lag.
Das Tor, durch das er dann geschritten,
lag stumm und dunkel ganz und gar.
Er war ein Kind aus Favoriten
und hieß Mattihas Sindelar.
***
(da Football, Fascismus and England's Nazi salute, di Jonathan Duffy, BBC, 23 settembre 2003 - presentazione del documentario prodotto dalla BBC: Fascism and Football)
Yet not everyone was corruptible. After Austria's annexation, Germany abolished the superior Austrian team and used its players to bolster its own side. But Austria's star player Matthias Sindelar refused to go along with the plan.
Not only that but in the two teams' final match before integration, Sindelar humiliated the Nazis by scoring one of two winning goals against Germany.
Within a year, Sindelar was dead, aged 35. A Gestapo file marked him out as pro-Jewish and a social democrat.
There has always been suspicion about the nature of his death - Sindelar, who had become a symbol of Austrian patriotism, died in his girlfriends' apartment from carbon monoxide poisoning. Some believed he had been killed, others assumed he committed suicide.
Yet not everyone was corruptible. After Austria's annexation, Germany abolished the superior Austrian team and used its players to bolster its own side. But Austria's star player Matthias Sindelar refused to go along with the plan.
Not only that but in the two teams' final match before integration, Sindelar humiliated the Nazis by scoring one of two winning goals against Germany.
Within a year, Sindelar was dead, aged 35. A Gestapo file marked him out as pro-Jewish and a social democrat.
There has always been suspicion about the nature of his death - Sindelar, who had become a symbol of Austrian patriotism, died in his girlfriends' apartment from carbon monoxide poisoning. Some believed he had been killed, others assumed he committed suicide.
 |
| Egon Ulbrich |
His death was recorded as an "accident", but the reason for this has remained a mystery until now. Egon Ulbrich, a lifelong friend of the forward, revealed to the BBC documentary makers how a local official was bribed to record his death as an accident, thereby ensuring he would receive a state funeral.
"According to the Nazi rules, a person who had been murdered or who has committed suicide cannot be given a grave of honour. So we had to do something to ensure that the criminal element involved in his death was removed," says Mr Ulbrich.
Within a year, Europe's rivalries switched from the football field to the battlefield.
Then, on the morning of January 23 1939, his friend Gustav Hartmann, looking for Sindelar, broke down the door of a flat on Annagasse. He found the great centre-forward, naked and dead, lying alongside the unconscious form of his girlfriend of 10 days, Camilla Castignola. She died later in hospital, the victim, like Sindelar, of asphyxiation by carbon monoxide fumes from a faulty heater.
Or at least that was the police said, as they ended their enquiries after two days. The Public Prosecutor, though, had still not reached a conclusion six months later when the Nazi authorities ordered the case be closed. Others came up with their own explanations. On January 25, a piece in the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung claimed that "everything points towards this great man having become the victim of murder through poisoning". In "Gedicht vom Tode eines Fussballers" ("Ballad on the Death of a Footballer"), Friedrich Torberg, one of the foremost coffee-house writers, suggested suicide by a man who felt "disowned" by "the new order". In an over-simplistic 2003 BBC documentary, Egon Ulbrich, a friend of Sindelar, claimed a local official was bribed to record his death as an accident, which ensured that he would receive a state funeral.
And yet the truth is that, emotionally appealing as several of the theories are, when you hack through the jungle of rumour and half-truth that has sprung up around the case, the facts suggest Sindelar was simply the victim of an accident. Despite various claims, the police records have neither been destroyed nor gone missing. They are still there in Vienna, and accessible. There have been suggestions that Sindelar and/or Castignola were Jewish. It is true that Sindelar played for Austria Vienna, the club of the Jewish bourgeoisie, and came from Moravia, from where several Jews had migrated to Vienna, but his family was Catholic. It is just about conceivable that Castignola, an Italian, may have had Jewish origins, but they were well enough hidden that she had been allowed to become co-owner of a bar in the week before her death.
But the most telling piece of evidence is that the upstairs neighbours had complained a few days earlier that one of the chimneys in the block was defective. Some have pointed out that there was no smell of gas in the flat, but then there wouldn't have been; carbon monoxide is odourless. For all that, the sense that heroes cannot mundanely die had prevailed. Sindelar has become a cipher, an empty vessel into which has been poured the preoccupations of the time. What, after all, could better symbolise Austria at the point of the Anschluss than this athlete-artist being gassed alongside his Jewish girlfriend?"The good Sindelar followed the city, whose child and pride he was, to its death", Polgar wrote in his obituary. "He was so inextricably entwined with it that he had to die when it did. All the evidence points to suicide prompted by loyalty to his homeland. For to live and play football in the downtrodden, broken, tormented city meant deceiving Vienna with a repulsive spectre of itself ... But how can one play football like that? And live, when a life without football is nothing?"
It is a beautiful sentiment, but it is not necessarily the truth.
Within a year, Europe's rivalries switched from the football field to the battlefield.
***
Sindelar: the ballad of the tragic hero
(Jonathan Wilson, The Guardian, 3 aprile 2007)
(Jonathan Wilson, The Guardian, 3 aprile 2007)
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| Vienna 1938 Johann Mock e Matthias Sindelar |
Or at least that was the police said, as they ended their enquiries after two days. The Public Prosecutor, though, had still not reached a conclusion six months later when the Nazi authorities ordered the case be closed. Others came up with their own explanations. On January 25, a piece in the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung claimed that "everything points towards this great man having become the victim of murder through poisoning". In "Gedicht vom Tode eines Fussballers" ("Ballad on the Death of a Footballer"), Friedrich Torberg, one of the foremost coffee-house writers, suggested suicide by a man who felt "disowned" by "the new order". In an over-simplistic 2003 BBC documentary, Egon Ulbrich, a friend of Sindelar, claimed a local official was bribed to record his death as an accident, which ensured that he would receive a state funeral.
 |
| Friedrich Torberg |
But the most telling piece of evidence is that the upstairs neighbours had complained a few days earlier that one of the chimneys in the block was defective. Some have pointed out that there was no smell of gas in the flat, but then there wouldn't have been; carbon monoxide is odourless. For all that, the sense that heroes cannot mundanely die had prevailed. Sindelar has become a cipher, an empty vessel into which has been poured the preoccupations of the time. What, after all, could better symbolise Austria at the point of the Anschluss than this athlete-artist being gassed alongside his Jewish girlfriend?"The good Sindelar followed the city, whose child and pride he was, to its death", Polgar wrote in his obituary. "He was so inextricably entwined with it that he had to die when it did. All the evidence points to suicide prompted by loyalty to his homeland. For to live and play football in the downtrodden, broken, tormented city meant deceiving Vienna with a repulsive spectre of itself ... But how can one play football like that? And live, when a life without football is nothing?"
It is a beautiful sentiment, but it is not necessarily the truth.
