Clown Ferdinand
Photo: Archive
In the blissful 1970s, I rolled around in the north of Weimar as a cheeky tomboy. We lived on the edge of the forest and were woken up by the bellowing of dignified deer. Naturally, the deer catcher was lying on the bed, ready to hand. As an experienced reader of Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, I knew what dangers could be expected at any time from wild animals and rabid pale faces. I was, of course, on Tokei-ihto’s Indian team, which had to avenge the murder of his father by the trigger-happy white villain Red Fox.
Tokei-ihto
Frank Schöbel – Topic
Next to the children’s and youth library, the football field was the most important place in my life. My father Achim played for the old men of BSG Motor Weimar. At the beginning I also played for Motor, before the wind blew me to wonderful teams like Traktor Kromsdorf and Empor Weimar. Thanks to the European Cup victory of 1. FC Magdeburg in 1974 and the GDR’s participation in the World Cup in the Federal Republic of Germany with a matching 1-0 win in Hamburg, GDR football received a major boost: every little boy replayed the Sparwasser goal and wanted one later Be saving water, at least one Lothar Kurbjuweit, that was the name of our best local World Cup player from Jena. Even in the GDR, football players wore their hair three centimeters longer than average, which turned them into wicked demigods in our eleven-year-old eyes.
My father regularly took me to the games of his beloved FC Carl Zeiss Jena, I enjoyed the live games early on and spent half the week busying myself with the GDR Oberliga and choosing the match days. The GDR champions always came from Jena, which became my life’s team on my first visit to the game (a 2-1 win in Vieselbach).
Suddenly world class: Lothar Kurbjuweit (left, GDR) marvels at Ze Maria’s (Brazil) overhead kick in the second round of the 1974 World Cup.
Photo: Imago/WEREK
I often and enjoyed attending my father’s games. Achim was the left runner and worked his side in an exemplary manner. I would tremble in my mother’s hand when one of these four-footed boys from the Thuringian Forest dared to stop my father’s graceful ballet on the wing with a brutal foul. In my dreams I saw father rolling around the sports field. His hair was three centimeters long and he wore a colorful headband. Father danced, the steam ram snorted and the inevitable showdown ensued. The noble Indian was felled by the scrappy redneck.
The Sons of the Big Bear – DEFA trailer
DEFA Foundation
Mother and I rushed to the injured father, who in my dreams was wallowing in his blood. We put him on his side and Mother dabbed the sweat from his forehead with a silk scarf while I gripped the handle of my deer catcher and saddled my fiery stallion. We rode to the wicked salon of the villain who killed Father. I drove my revenge dagger into his ribs.
In the film dream, father became a gentle Indian dad, while the villain took on the features of the actor Jiří Vršťala, who played the Red Fox in the film, but whose real role in life was that of the clown Ferdinand, popular with all children. What a cruel fate, what an early childhood tragedy!
Ballhaus East
Imago/Matthias Koch
Frank Willmann looks at the football between Leipzig, Łódź and Ljubljana.
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