The Footballer who Defied the Nazis? The Myth of Matthias Sindelar, and the Myth of Austrian Victimhood

The Assistant Professor of Football: Soccer, Culture, History.

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Matthias Sindelar was, and is, the most famous Austrian footballer between World Wars 1 and 2. Known for his elegant style of play during a period when Austrian soccer was admired as an innovative model, he defined Austria’s national team, known as the "miracle team," and his club, Austria Vienna. Austria joined Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945. And when it arose as an independent nation again, Sindelar's legacy was more than that of a footballer: he became a myth - the elegant Austrian who defied the Nazis. This version of Sindelar has reached a wide international audience, from Italian graphic novels and Latin American books to articles in well-known English-speaking newspapers, complete with the story of how Sindelar celebrated a goal “by dancing in front of a directors' box packed with high-ranking Nazis."

Until recently, no historian has attempted to probe these stories. The story of the elegant footballer who defied the Nazis was too endearing for antifascist football fans worldwide - and for Austrians, who wanted to see themselves as victims of the Nazis.

As far as the international, English-speaking discussion is concerned, this episode is a first. David Forster, a historian from Vienna, has published research in German into Sindelar’s life and death that offers a pathbreaking counter-narrative to the story of Sindelar, the resister, and Austria, the victim. We will journey from 1903 to 1938, but ask many hard questions of today along the way, about truth, about the nature of history, about collective forgetfulness, and about our responsibility as fans of and storytellers about the beautiful game today.
HELPFUL LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
David Forster, Georg Spitaler, Jakob Rosenberg, "Fussball unterm Hakenkreuz in der Ostmark" (book, website in German)

David Forster, Viennese Football and the German Wehrmacht (academic article in English, via JSTOR)
WBUR Radio, “Dancing Before The Nazis: A Soccer Star's (Supposed) Act Of Defiance” (Interview with Georg Spitaler)
Matthias Sindelar - the Footballer Who Defied the Nazis (popular YouTube video that tells the heroic story of Sindelar)
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Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige Lind
Instrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/