WHEN Bernhard Trautmann landed in Britain he was the opposite of a hero – he was a German prisoner of war who’d signed up for the Hitler Youth as a teenager.
But a decade later the tall, blonde, blue eyed ‘Aryan’ had changed his name to Bert and become the most heroic goalkeeper in the history of football.
With a just over quarter of an hour left to play in the 1956 FA Cup final the Manchester City number one felt his neck jar back as it collided with the knee of an on rushing striker.
For several minutes he lay unconscious on Wembley Stadium’s green turf and when Trautmann came to his captain tried to persuade his groggy first line of defence to leave the field.
In those days no substitutes were allowed and the keeper insisted he was fit to continue.
Despite being in great pain he made two more saves, one of which saw him knocked out again, securing a famous victory.
At the post match banquet he was unable to move his head, but it wasn’t until four days later Trautmann learned the true extent of his injury. He’d broken his neck and could have died.
Now a movie called The Keeper has been made about his remarkable resilience.
The English language production starring German actor David Kross as Trautmann and Skins actress Freya Mavor as his wife tells the story of how this flawed man overcame adversity on and off the pitch.
Speaking to The Sun his son Mark Trautmann, who lives in East Anglia, says: “He came through the war, the animosity when he first played for City, and his first son John dying in a car accident.”
Not only that Trautmann, who died in 2013 aged 89, came through two divorces to end his life happily in his third marriage.
And he was awarded an OBE for promoting positive Anglo-German relations, having shown that peace and reconciliation are the way forward.
That stood in stark contrast to his early years.
'Brainwashed' by Hitler
Growing up impoverished in Bremen he joined the Nazi Hitler Youth and then signed up to fight at the age of 17 in World War Two.
Mark, who lives in East Anglia, explains: “He loved sport as a child and the Hitler Youth came along and helped him with that passion. He didn’t see it as a political tool. In a way he was brainwashed.”
As a paratrooper he was awarded five medals, including the Iron Cross, fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front, and was then moved to the Western front where he survived the British bombing of Cleves in 1944.
When he was captured by American soldiers his instinct was to run because on the Eastern front prisoners often got a bullet.
The athletic soldier jumped over a fence, where he was greeted by a British soldier saying “Hello Fritz, fancy a cup of tea?”
He spent the next four years in POW camps in England, mostly in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Greater Manchester, where he got a local girl called Marion pregnant.
Bert refused to marry her and didn’t have much to do with their daughter Freda until much later in life.
His prowess between the goal posts at the prison camp had been noticed and on his release he started playing for nearby non-league St Helens Town.
He had a soft spot for Manchester
This time when he fell in love it resulted in marriage to Margaret Friar, despite objections from her friends.
The film shows how locals did not approve the romance and their son says “my mother faced animosity as well for marrying a German prisoner of war so soon after the war.”
It got even worse when Trautmann signed for top league Man City in 1949 with fans threatening a boycott and crowds shouting “Nazi” at him.
The intervention of a local Rabbi, urging protesters to give the German a chance, and the keeper’s fine performances slowly turned opinion in his favour.
The forgiveness and generous spirit of the people he met in the North was what persuaded Trautmann to stay in England rather than return home.
Mark says: “I think he felt more British than German. He had a soft spot for Manchester and the North West.
“I think he stayed here because of the way people treated each other in those days. The first time he went back to Germany with my mum people from the local community gave him food parcels to take back to Germany."
Just 'a pain in the neck'
In 1955 he became the first German to play in an FA Cup final, losing to Newcastle United.
But a year later he was the first goalie to win the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the year.
He was genuinely lucky not to have either died or been permanently paralysed by the injury suffered in the 1956 win over Birmingham City at Wembley.
Mark, 58, who was born four years after that final, says: “Being my father he thought about it for a second and carried on. It was just a pain in the neck. In those days goalies could be tackled. Often he would come off the pitch black and blue.”
The surgeon told him “you should be dead,” because the second of five broken vertebrae had split in two.
Only another piece of bone being lodged in it was keeping him alive and even the jolt a car suddenly breaking could have finished him off.
Bert spent the next five months covered in plaster from head to hips wondering if he’d ever play football again.
Trauma of six-year-old son killed by car
Terrible misfortune was to come while he was convalescing, when Bert and Margaret’s first son John was killed after running into the road.
The trauma of the loss of their six year-old boy took a toll on their marriage with the couple getting divorced 15 years later when Mark was aged ten.
He says: “When John died it put both of them through a lot of heartache. My brother and I came along afterwards and my mother was very protective of us, obviously.
“I don’t think she ever fully recovered from the death of John. I think my father dealt with it by focusing on his sport.”
Described by Mark as a “firm but fair father”, who’d insist his son would clean his muddy boots before washing himself, they drifted apart for a decade after the divorce.
Mark went to live with him mum in North Wales, while Bert coached football around the world after retiring from the game.
While Bert was working in Burma he married a fellow German called Ursula Van der Heyde and for the next decade Mark only saw his dad every two or three years.
It was only when Mark was stationed out in Germany in the RAF that they grew close again, with his dad Bert opening up about his time in the war.
Former air force technician Mark recalls: “I can remember asking if he ever killed anyone in the war and he said, ‘War is a horrendous thing and you don’t ever see what you’ve done, you’re just looking over battlements.’
“I remember him telling me about stumbling across SS men shooting some Jews in the forest and running away.”
A new lease of life
Determined to make sure Europe never went to war again, Bert set up a foundation helping youth teams in both Britain and Germany.
Appropriately, his charity’s motto was Courage Counts.
Mark says: “I don’t think my father realised what he was achieving at the time in terms of building the bridges between the two countries.
“It wasn’t until later on and he was coming back to do charity work, he started to understand it.”
Bert also sought to make amends for his poor treatment of his estranged daughter Freda, growing close to her when she was an adult.
The goalie had been good at keeping his dark secret from his family.
Mark, who also has an older brother Stephen, says: “I didn’t know about her until he was reconciled with her. It was a bit of a surprise when it happened.”
Bert married for a third time in 1986, having split from Ursula four years earlier.
He was to spend the rest of his life with Marlis before dying from a heart attack in Spain in July 2013, aged 89.
His son hopes the movie will remind audiences of the power of forgiveness and the positive effect it can have on healing deep wounds.
Mark concludes: “I think the impact will be acceptance of the time my father was living in and of how understanding and compassionate the British nation can be.”
The Keeper is in cinemas now.
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