At dawn the 20 men went into battle. “The fight rages hot, in dust and steam,” reported a ballad from 1902. When the sun went down, 19 men were dead. Only one survived, an illustration shows him in torn clothes, hobbling on a crutch, with a bandaged head and arm sling . “The rest of them all, brought a ball,” concluded the ballad.
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What was meant was: a football. A leather ball as a deadly projectile? Football, as cruel as a battle of war?
In fact, this polemic, published in a magazine of the Munich men’s gymnastics club, was not a trivial piece of entertainment. Today, almost 120 years later, it is hard to imagine that a relentless cultural battle once raged over the national sport of football. That in Bavaria, home of the future record champions from Munich, football was temporarily banned – at least for players under the age of 17.
The footballer, degenerated “into a monkey”
This sport is too prone to injury, too raw and because of its English roots too un-German, it said. The German Empire vied with Great Britain for colonies and the navy, and so both educators and patriots saw football as a danger to German youth.
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