Started at senior level and played first international match, 1938 to 1940
In the 1937/38 season, 1. FCK was relegated from the Gauliga Südwest in second-to-last place. With the ex-Berliner Karl Berndt, a new coach took over the sporting management and with the promotion of Fritz Walter from youth, a new era started for the Betzenberg eleven. His contribution to FCK's sporting renaissance was so great that match programmes wrote of the "Walter team" as early as 1940. On 11 September 1938, the team relegated from the Gauliga started the association season in the second-class Mittelpfalz district with an 8-1 victory and four Walter goals against SV Niederauerbach. In October Walter scored all twelve goals in successive matches against FC Rodalben (7-0) and WSV Kammgarn Kaiserslautern (5-0). His sporting added value was established early on, and with the highly regarded "newcomer" FCK won the 1939 championship in the Mittelpfalz district with a six-point lead over SG Neustadt. The team scored 113 goals in 24 games, with debutant Fritz Walter alone contributing 59 goals to the championship. In May/June, FCK also beat VfR Frankenthal and TSG Burbach in the promotion round and thus returned to the Gauliga Südwest for the 1939/40 season.
Already in his first senior year he was called by the Gaufußball teacher southwest, ex-national player Karl Hohmann, to training courses and selection games; including games of the southwest selection in November 1938 against Baden, in February 1939 against Lorraine and on 26 March 1939 against Italy B. Due to the outbreak of the Second World War, the two-team Gaumeisterschaft in the Saar-Pfalz division did not begin in the south-west until 26 November 1939. Alongside young star Fritz Walter and veteran international and senior Heinrich Hergert, other youngsters such as Werner Baßler, Heinz Folz, Edwin Bretz and Paul Baum also earned their first caps. Thanks to 25 goals - another source speaks of 30 - by Fritz Walter, the promoted team managed to win the 1940 season; in the two games for the division championship, however, the champion of the Mainhessen division, Kickers Offenbach (1:1, 6:3), prevailed. The 1939/40 season ended with the final stage for the 1940 German football championship and an international match on 14 July 1940 in Frankfurt against Romania. As the semi-finals between FC Schalke 04 and SV Waldhof as well as Rapid Wien and Dresdner SC for the 1940 German Football Championship were played like the international match on 14 July 1940, goalkeeper Alexander Martinek (Wacker Wien), centre half Kurt Krüger (Fortuna Düsseldorf) and right winger Ernst Plener of VR Gleiwitz made their debuts in Reich coach Sepp Herberger's team for the international match against Romania. Herberger relied on the attacking formation with Plener, Wilhelm Hahnemann, Fritz Walter, Hans Fiederer and Willi Arlt and experienced a brilliant 9:3 victory, which was an excellent debut for the Lauter debutant, not only because of his three goals. Leinemann notes two Herberger statements in connection with Fritz Walter's national team debut: "I'm pleased, Fritz, you didn't disappoint me. You may come back." This was an appropriate debut for an international of whom Herberger said twenty years later, "Fritz was not discovered. His unique talent offered itself, imposed itself, asserted itself. From that time until today, I could not imagine our national team without Fritz. For me, Fritz is the greatest footballer German football has ever produced."
Walter's premiere in the Reichsauswahl, however, was already on Saturday, 15 July 1939, when the national team won 6:5 against the Bayern-Elf at the Willy-Sachs-Stadion in Schweinfurt. This was the first time the Lauter talent had met August Klingler, another exceptional attacking talent with whom he got on splendidly, and not just on the pitch. Fritz and "Guscht" became friends. His second Reichself appearance was on September 3, 1939; his opponent was the Sportgau Sachsen in Chemnitz. In this period he had distinguished himself in the Gauauswahl Südwest under coach Hohmann in the games for the Reichsbundpokal 1939/40 against Mittelrhein (2:1), Hessen (3:0, double scorer) and on 14 January 1940 in the 1:2 defeat against the later cup winner Bavaria with his zeal and ability and found in Hohmann a professionally competent and enthusiastic supporter.
Football in the Second World War, 1940 to 1945
Fritz Walter was drafted into the Wehrmacht on 5 December 1940 in the 23er - or Daenner barracks in Kaiserslautern. The locations of the infantry replacement battalion were Kaiserslautern from 5 December 1940, Conflans in eastern France from 13 July 1941, Commercy from 1 September 1942, Conflans again from 1 October 1942 and Diedenhofen from 5 December 1942 to September 1944. On 1 December 1943, belonging to the 2nd Company Fortress Battalion 902 with operational area Italy (Sardinia, Corsica, Elba), he was transferred to Luftwaffe Fighter Squadron 11 at Jever.
After his call-up to the Wehrmacht, Walter led an adventurous life as a footballer and played in eleven different formations: as a "vacationer" in the 1. FCK, as a "guest player" in the TSG Diedenhofen and in the TSG Saargemünd, as a "representative" in the Gauauswahl Westmark, as an "international" in the Reichself, as a soldier in the kicker company of the guard battalion Großdeutschland, as an "actor" in the "FC Nord" in the movie "Das große Spiel", in the location teams of Kaiserslautern and Diedenhofen, in the Pariser Soldatenelf and in the Luftwaffenelf Rote Jäger. The football-enthusiastic fighter pilot Hermann Graf commanded a squadron and gradually acquired high-performance footballers. The "Rote Jäger" became one of the best German military teams in the Second World War.
With Walter, the 1st FCK finished 2nd in the Gau Westmark behind FV Saarbrücken in 1940/41; he scored 16 goals in 13 games. The national player contributed 43 goals in 14 league games to the championship win in 1941/42. Now, in addition to Walter, half of the players - Werner Kohlmeyer, Ernst Liebrich, Baßler, brother Ottmar and Heinz Jergens - belonged to the FCK team that began an era of success in the Oberliga Südwest after the end of the Second World War. In the rounds of 1942/43 and 1943/44, which were negatively affected by the war, Fritz Walter only played sporadically for his FCK; however, the debut of the later "world stopper" Werner Liebrich in the last round played in the Gau Westmark 1943/44 was pleasing.
Walter, by his own admission, did not fire a single shot until his capture.
He was picked up by US troops in Bohemia on 8 May 1945 and handed over to the Red Army along with many others. He was a Soviet prisoner of war in a camp near Máramarossziget, Romania, near the border with Ukraine. Weakened by a bout of malaria, he played football with Hungarian and Slovakian guards. They recognized the German international and introduced him to the Soviet camp commander Zhukov. Apparently Zhukov saved Walter and his younger brother Ludwig from the Siberian Gulag; the brothers returned to Kaiserslautern as early as October 28, 1945.
Walter later described not the 1954 World Cup final as the (football) "match of his life", but the football match with the guards.
Oberliga Southwest, 1945 to 1959
Football in the French Zone, 1945 to 1950
The clubs in the north of the French occupation zone began play on 6 January 1946 with ten teams in what was then called the "1st Liga Südwestdeutschland Nord", which formed the basis of the later Oberliga Südwest. Half of the ten new Oberliga teams came from the former Gauliga Westmark: 1st FC Kaiserslautern, 1st FC Saarbrücken, Phönix Ludwigshafen, Borussia Neunkirchen and VfR Frankenthal. The "Zonenliga Nord" was completed by Wormatia Worms, FK Pirmasens, FSV Mainz 05, 1. FC Idar and Hassia Bingen.
Fritz Walter returned to his hometown from captivity with brother Ludwig on October 28, 1945, three days before his 25th birthday. Their home was no longer the home they had left. The town was destroyed, the souls damaged. "Chaos, misery, rubble, hunger." That was how Fritz summed up his impressions. At least, his childhood home was still standing. And his father and mother were alive. The sisters, too. Only brother Ottmar was still in English captivity. Immediately after his arrival, he became the catalyst for the rebuilding of the 1st FCK. Taken to task by the new leadership circle around provisional chairman Paul Karch, he agreed: "Football and nothing else," journalist Rudi Michel quotes his friend's decision. From then on, he held the positions of managing director, player-coach and captain at his club. However, the Betzenberg was still owned by the French occupying forces; only when Walter agreed to coach the French soldiers' team did the military government hand the ground back to 1. FCK. The international had already gathered a group of players around him on the neighbouring Erbsenberg and resumed training. Among the men of the first hour were the brothers Ernst and Werner Liebrich, goal scorer Werner Baßler and defender Werner Kohlmeyer. Since FCK's opening match in Bingen was postponed, the first opponent in the home game on January 13, 1946 was SV Phönix Ludwigshafen. The 10-0 opening victory was the first indication of the enthusiasm and accuracy that characterised the style of the "Walter eleven" in the years to come. In the end, with a one-point deficit to 1. FC Saarbrücken and 95 goals scored, it was only enough for the runner-up spot.
The biggest problem until the currency reform in 1948 was the extraordinarily poor food and supply situation of the population and thus also of the football players. Around potatoes, ("Grumbeere"), bread, coals and tobacco, which one, as far as one was not a smoker, could "verfuggern" - exchange - at best, all daily conversations turned. Since top sporting performances could hardly be achieved with a growling stomach, the club and team used their sporting fame to improve their personal nutritional situation: So-called Grumbeer, Fressalien or Kalorien games were concluded with country clubs, whereby the match fee for the much higher-class FCK consisted of coveted natural goods such as food or coal. Locally, the initiators of these games were often football-loving landowners or innkeepers. The appearance of the FCK team at the time ensured that an extremely loyal FCK following developed in these communities.
Until the second season in 1946/47 could start, the clubs had to survive some trials and tribulations caused by the sports administration. The return of Ottmar Walter, who was released from captivity and played for the FCK for the first time on 20 October 1946 in a friendly match against Wiesenthalerhof, was both pleasing and valuable from a sporting point of view. With his older brother and Werner Baßler, Ottmar formed the inside forward line that became the nightmare of many defences in the years that followed. A hard-fought 2-0 win in Worms on 30 March 1947 was the decisive step towards the first regional championship after the war, as Saarbrücken and Mainz both fluffed. With 23:5 points and 75:15 goals, player-coach Fritz Walter won the championship with his club in the 1st Division Southwest Germany North. The Lauter conductor scored 22 goals, but was outdone by brother Ottmar with one goal. The two games for the French zone championship in June 1947 against VfL 1900 Konstanz were a mere formality: FCK won the first leg on the Betzenberg with 8:1, at Lake Constance player-coach Walter's team prevailed with 8:4.
In the third season after the new start, 1947/48, 1. FCK left the niche of the French zone and made the step from local greatness to a nationally recognized top team. With 48:4 points and 151:18 goals in 26 league games, Fritz Walter's team won the championship in the southwest, five points ahead of 1. FC Saarbrücken. The inside trio in the WM system, - Fritz, brother Ottmar and Baßler - scored 108 goals alone. The champions suffered only one defeat: Of all things at the league newcomer VfL Neustadt, he lost the away game on 14 March 1948 with 0:2 goals. Politics intervened seriously in the sport in May 1948: The French Football Federation under Jules Rimet disconnected the Saarland clubs from German football, they were only allowed to finish the round. FCK sent the visitors from FSV Mainz 05 home with a resounding 13-2 victory on 13 June, their last match of the season. The two following matches for the French zone championship against SV 04 Rastatt were no more than a compulsory task, easily done with 3:0 and 6:1.
On 18 July, 1. FCK started the first final round for the German football championship after the end of the Second World War with a 5:1 win against the southern runners-up TSV 1860 München in Worms. A week later, Lautern beat SpVgg Neuendorf by the same scoreline in front of 50,000 spectators in Wuppertal to advance to the final on 8 August 1948 in Cologne against 1. FC Nürnberg. Under player-coach Fritz Walter, Kaiserslautern had made the step to the top of German club football. In front of 75,000 spectators at the Müngersdorf stadium, the "Club" prevailed 2-1 and Lautern returned to the Barbarossa city in the Palatinate Forest as German runners-up.
The German runners-up from Kaiserslautern entered the 1948/49 round with 12 competitors from the southwest. The four Saarland representatives 1st FC and SV Saarbrücken, Neunkirchen and Völklingen were no longer able to continue playing in the Southwest League due to political circumstances. With 43:5 points and 142:22 goals, FCK achieved the championship hat-trick. They started the season on 18 September 1948 with a 7-1 win at SpVgg Andernach. More significant for player-coach Fritz Walter was probably his marriage on 2 September to wife Italia Bortoluzzi, the interpreter for the French military government, to whom he was then happily married for 53 years.
At the end of the season, the defending champions had 43:5 points and a goal difference of 142:22. Player-coach Walter scored 30 goals in 22 league games and Werner Baßler even scored 54. The two obligatory finals for the French Zone Championship were won by Walter's team in May 1949 with 4:0 and 6:3 against Fortuna Freiburg. In the final round of the German football championship, the finalists from the previous year had to push themselves to the limit in the preliminary round on 12 June in Bremen against the northern runners-up FC St. Pauli: The match ended 1-1 after extra time. The "old masters" from the north with experts such as Ludwig Alm, Karl Miller, Hans Appel, Walter Dzur, Harald Stender, Fritz Machate and Alfred Boller made it very difficult for the southwest champions. In the replay eight days later in Düsseldorf, FCK won 4-1 and advanced to the intermediate round. There, on 26 June, they faced West German champions Borussia Dortmund in front of 60,000 spectators at the Grünwalder Straße stadium in Munich. The two top teams drew 0-0 after extra time in an exhausting match. Eight days later, on 3 July, the exhausted Walter eleven lost the replay in Cologne with 1:4. Erich Schanko hung on to the Lauter playmaker like a limpet in both games and his destroyer quality was decisive for the Dortmund success. With the 3rd place by a 2:1 victory after extra time against Südmeister Kickers Offenbach the round 1948/49 was terminated and player coach Walter handed over to the next season the coach office to Kuno Krügel. As a "sideline", the FCK player-coach had led local rivals VfR Kaiserslautern into the Oberliga Südwest as coach during this round.
The fourth championship win in a row in the southwest turned out to be much closer than usual in 1949/50; with a three-point lead over Wormatia Worms - Wormatia took 3:1 points in the two games against FCK - the "Red Devils" achieved renewed championship success for the first time with only player Fritz Walter and coach Krügel with 54:6 points and 157:24 goals. The inside trio with Fritz (32), Ottmar (42) and Baßler (47) scored the majority of the goals. The financial aspect became increasingly important. The round income was not enough for Kaiserslautern, with 2,000 to 3,000 spectators at the majority of home games and only full stands when Worms and Neuendorf came to the Betzenberg, FCK, which regularly filled the opposing stadiums at away games, had to provide additional income through friendlies. The south-western champions tried to market their good name - especially in the person of Fritz Walter - in the best possible way and used every free weekend to often even play two games. On the one hand, these games were an important factor for the club's continuing popularity and finances, but on the other, the mammoth programme was a test of endurance for every single player. During the season, Heinz Jergens, already a member of the 1942 Gaumeisterelf, returned from captivity and young Horst Eckel also recorded his first two games. Fritz Walter, even without the function of the player-coach, was still heart and brain and the playful fixed point of the team, completed in the league 26 round games and scored 32 goals. The hurdle of the final for the French zone championship was no longer a friendly match in the last year, against SSV Reutlingen the FCK prevailed 6:1 only in extra time on 7 May 1950. In the final round of the German football championship, two goals by Fritz Walter on 21 May 1950 in Karlsruhe against the Melches team of Rot-Weiss Essen were enough for a 2-2 draw after extra time. The replay on 29 May in Cologne was also exhausting and energy-sapping. After 90 minutes, the game against Heinz Wewers, August Gottschalk and Bernhard Termath ended in a 2-2 draw, and only a goal by Ottmar Walter in extra time allowed the team to advance to the intermediate round. There, the eventual German champions, coach Georg Wurzer's team and runners-up of the Oberliga Süd, VfB Stuttgart, prevailed safely in Nuremberg with a 5-2 win, bringing an early end to the final round for the Walter eleven.
With a clear 5:0 victory in Ludwigshafen in front of 60,000 spectators, the team from the Palatinate had reached the finals of the 1949/50 German Cup against the Hamburg team on 22 January 1950. The Lauter playmaker had scored two goals. However, Fritz Walter was unable to play in the final on 19 March 1950 due to injury.
Excerpts from Rudi Michel's laudation on November 25, 1985, on the occasion of the awarding of honorary citizenship of Kaiserslautern, show the importance of Fritz Walter's work for the city and the region, even off the pitch: "[...] Fritz Walter, with his team, at least celebrated games for the people during the deprived time after the Second World War. Only those who have lived through this period, who have experienced this time, can appreciate what Sundays meant to the people of Kaiserslautern: Distraction from need and sorrow, from hunger and misery. The only diversion from the dreary everyday life without hope and without perspective was a football team. There was one who, with ten or twelve others, replaced cinema, coffee house and concert hall for tens of thousands on Sundays for 90 minutes, whether they understood anything about the game or not. They ran from the destroyed city to the Betzenberg stadium. [...] The Fritz is playing, you must have seen that - the only subject apart from all worries about existence. That was art, because one aspect of art is to give people more than they are capable of - in whatever field. In those days, football was the art of distraction. [...] And the star of that era was one of them, son of this town, one like you and me, one who knew no airs. “
One-division Oberliga Southwest, 1950 to 1959
In the run-up to the 1950/51 season, the south-west formed an independent regional association with its own Oberliga, which corresponded to the northern group of the previous French Zone, while the southern group joined the South German Association. The new Oberliga Südwest, as it was now officially called, consisted of 14 teams and FCK started the season on the second matchday, 3 September 1950, with a narrow 2-1 away win against TuRa Ludwigshafen. There had been some personnel changes at the Betzenberg: The 31-year-old Richard Schneider, he already played with Fritz Walter in the youth, took over as coach from Krügel and with Grewenig, Gawliczek and Hölz three departures from the playing squad had to be replaced. With the newcomers Karl Wanger, Karl-Heinz Wettig and Wilfried Pilkahn the club tried to compensate the sportive loss, which was successful in the course of the round, because with Helmut Rasch another usable player was added and late returnee Jergens pushed into the team, where also the young talent Horst Eckel found his place. With 46:6 points and 95:16 goals, the Betzenberg team won the championship with a seven-point lead over Worms. Due to injuries and illness, Fritz Walter had only appeared in 19 of the 26 league games and had only scored five goals. In the final round of the German championship, however, he played successfully for his club in all six group matches and in the final. In the second half, the Walter brothers' two co-productions decided the final on 30 June 1951 in Berlin against Preußen Münster in front of 85,000 spectators at the Olympiastadion. First Ottmar converted an assist from Fritz in the 61st minute to equalise 1-1, before heading home a corner from Fritz in the 74th minute for a 2-1 victory. Finally, the 1st FCK could bring the championship trophy to the Palatinate. The final success was the reward for years of sporting consistency and perseverance of the men around Fritz Walter. Grüne notes: "The Red Devils, led by Fritz Walter, beat Münster's 'Hunderttausendmarksturm' 2-1 in 90 minutes, happily but not undeservedly, and brought the championship to the Palatinate for the first time."
Winning the German championship had to console Walter over the fact that he could not participate in the first international match after the end of World War II on 22 November 1950 in Stuttgart due to an injury from the representative match on 11 November 1950 in Ludwigshafen in the match Southwest against South Germany (2:2). He did not make his 25th international appearance until the return leg on 15 April 1951 in Zurich against Switzerland (3-2).
From the 1951/52 season onwards, the two Saarland representatives 1. FC Saarbrücken and Borussia Neunkirchen were once again able to take part in the south-west German league, and the team from the Saar capital immediately played a great round: 1. FC Saarbrücken dethroned the former series winner and reigning German champions 1. FC Kaiserslautern, became champions of the Oberliga Südwest and also entered the final for the German football championship. FCK finished in 3rd place; with 18 goals, Fritz Walter led the internal list of scorers, just ahead of teammates Karl Wanger and brother "Ottes" with 17 goals each. The departure of goal scorer Baßler to VfR Mannheim and the return of goalkeeper Adam to Neuendorf had made themselves felt, as in addition Ottmar Walter suffered a serious knee injury and was only able to play in 19 games. Horst Eckel was also not available throughout due to a fractured cheekbone. In terms of personnel, the Lauter players were able to draw hope for the future, as the performances of newcomers Otto Render and Erwin Scheffler, as well as the first-time display of the skills of youngster Willi Wenzel, gave cause for optimism.
In fact, with an outstanding Fritz Walter - the team's conductor and starting point had played in all 30 league games and scored 38 goals - 1. FCK once again won the Southwest championship in 1952/53 ahead of TuS Neuendorf and 1. FC Saarbrücken, who were tied on points. A sensational 9-0 win on 25 January 1953 against the previous year's champions, 1. FC Saarbrücken. In the group stage of the final round for the German championship, the south-west champions beat Eintracht Frankfurt, 1. FC Köln and Holstein Kiel and entered the final on 21 June 1953 in Berlin against the defending champions VfB Stuttgart. The final was overshadowed by the popular uprising in the GDR four days earlier, but 80,000 fans nevertheless watched the final. Grüne noted, "Because Kaiserslautern had saved its outstanding seasonal form until the final, the Red Devils' 4-1 victory was never in danger." "Stuttgart lost because it has no Fritz Walter," said Schalke coach Fritz Szepan, sitting in the stands, summing up events exactly. The team of the season was undoubtedly 1. FC Kaiserslautern. The collective around over-father Fritz Walter, who was playmaker, goal-scorer, coach and "pastor" of the Red Devils at the same time, was at the zenith of its ability. Lautern's secret was team spirit. In the very best Sepp Herberger manner, the Red Devils played under the motto "Elf Freunde sollt ihr sein" (Eleven friends you shall be) and radiated a corresponding aura.
From 1954 to 1957, Fritz Walter and his FCK collected four more south-west championships and reached the final of the German football championship twice in 1954 and 1955, but both finals were lost. 1957 was the end for the 36-year-old playmaker after the group stage. In his last two rounds in the Oberliga Südwest, 1957/58 and 1958/59, he and FCK failed to qualify for the finals. In the final year, the gap to champions FK Pirmasens was a remarkable eight points. Even an exceptional player like Fritz Walter, a man who lived for football, who maintained discipline in eating and drinking for decades, who displayed exemplary training morals, could not win the battle against performance-reducing ageing. On 21 June, the greatest footballer of Kaiserslautern and south-west Germany, the most influential player of the Oberliga era after the Second World War, certainly one of the best footballers ever to play in Germany, played his farewell match. Once again, he led his FCK to a 4-2 win over visiting Racing Paris in front of a crowd of 20,000. According to Bold, he said of his farewell: "I have to end my active role at 1. FC Kaiserslautern now, because at the age of 38 you simply can't perform at the highest level Sunday after Sunday, which the public might expect from me in memory of earlier times. Besides, it's time to make room for youth at the club as well."
Walter was considered the best footballer in Germany in the 1950s and received offers from major European top clubs. In 1951, Atlético Madrid offered DM 225,000 in hand money for a two-year contract, plus salary, bonuses, car, rent-free living - enormous sums and privileges at the time. "Dehäm is dehäm" he said succinctly about his decision to stay in the Palatinate. The down-to-earth Walter also turned down offers from Inter Milan, FC Nancy and Racing Paris. He later wrote in a column: "'Schätzche, was mache mer?' I asked my wife Italia. 'You don't even have to ask me,' she replied, 'up there is your Betzenberg, the boss, your FCK, the national team ......'". In support, Herberger had convinced Adidas founder Adi Dassler to offer Fritz a representative role in the company. In fact, however, a foreign engagement in those years would have been tantamount to the end of his national team career. No "legionnaire" played in the national team in those years, not even Bert Trautmann, and it was not until the 1962 World Cup in Chile that the first professional abroad was considered, Horst Szymaniak. Fritz Walter was the spiritus rector who embodied the heart and soul of the Palatinate team, who shone as an elegant ball virtuoso in the build-up to the game as well as an ice-cold enforcer, and who was not above doing the dirty work in defence - a universal footballing genius.
In a friendly match for FCK in 1956, he scored his legendary hack goal from Leipzig in a match against SC Wismut Karl-Marx-Stadt. It was described as one of the best goals of all time: Walter had dropped forward and then shot the ball over his own head into the right corner with his right heel. The GDR sports reporter Wolfgang Hempel called it the "goal of the century".
National player, 1940 to 1958
During the Second World War, 1940 to 1942
The name Fritz Walter had been in Reich coach Sepp Herberger's famous notebook since 1938. Karl Hohmann, an ex-national player and coach in the Gau Südwest at the time, had drawn Herberger's attention to the talent after he had examined and tested the Lauter native in every conceivable situation during a training course. When the next Gau training course was coming up, Hohmann informed his friend and boss Herberger. He didn't want to have a look at Walter beforehand, but wanted the talent to draw attention to himself in the game - Herberger was enraptured. There is no question that the Reich coach was reminded of his own youth in Mannheim by the seriousness and passion with which Fritz Walter trained.
On 14 July 1940, 19-year-old Walter played his first international match, scoring three goals in a 9-3 win over Romania. This was followed a few weeks later by a 13-0 win over Finland, in which he proved his worth with two goals. Herberger always used to say that only after about ten or twelve games does it become clear whether someone is really fit for the national team or not. In Fritz Walter's case, he had no doubts after just the second game. Helmut Schön, who later became Herberger's successor, played alongside the debutant from the Palatinate and describes his first impressions: "I can still see him in my mind's eye the first time we met. It was in the summer of 1940, before Fritz Walter's first international match against Romania. He was extraordinarily shy, very modest; a medium-sized, lean boy with a pointed face, a 'Bürschel', as Otto Nerz would have said. He spoke an amiable Palatine. But as soon as he had the ball, you could see: pure talent. When he matured, he became a genius."
More than his goal-scoring qualities, however, pundits admired the playmaking and tactical ability with which he directed his team's attacks. By constantly switching positions - even into defence - he embodied a completely new type of striker and was hailed as a coming superstar. Herberger managed his protégé like a professional coach. Against his own club and against the Reichssportbehörde, against military superiors as well as against the press, the sensitive ball wizard could count on the long arm and the strong words of his mentor. Herberger tricked, advertised and conspired to ensure a kind of shelter for the preservation and care of the football genius in the increasingly threatening turmoil of war. His special care and affection was for Fritz Walter, his "darling", as he himself called him. He did as much for no one as he did for him. To no one did he open himself so trustingly. To no one did he show his affection so openly. Conversely, however, the control was total: Herberger monitored his protégés as reliably as a radar system. He picked up signals, saw disturbances, anticipated collisions, kept dangers at bay. He alone decided what was good for Fritz.
In the war years 1940 to 1942, the Lauter played 24 international matches and scored 20 goals. Outstanding were the two international matches against Hungary on 6 April 1941 in Cologne and on 3 May 1942 in Budapest. In Cologne they won 7:0 after an excellent game, especially by the centre-forward Hahnemann, Walter and Schön. Fellow player and double scorer Helmut Schön noted in his memoirs: "After everything I experienced as a player and later saw as a coach, this game can only be compared to our 3-1 win over England at Wembley Stadium, when Günter Netzer had his greatest day." In Budapest, the DFB eleven turned around a Hungarian 3-1 half-time lead to win 5-3, the first victory in the long history of German-Hungarian football on Budapest soil. On this occasion Walter played at half-left alongside Karl Decker and Edmund Conen and scored two goals. Gabriel Hanot, probably one of the most important international experts, sang the first great international hymn of praise for Fritz Walter after the international match against Switzerland in Bern on 18 October 1942, which he won 5-3. It hangs framed in the White House in Alsenborn. Despite the war, the end of which was not in sight, the cosmopolitan Hanot predicted a great career for him.
The 5-2 victory over Slovakia in Bratislava on 22 November 1942 marked the end of the national team's history during the Second World War. The further course of the war interrupted Walter's international career; for eight years (from 1942 to 1951) he was unable to play another international match for Germany.
Federal Republic of Germany, 1951 to 1954
Fritz Walter achieved his most significant footballing success as captain of the German national football team when he and his team-mates won the final of the World Cup 3-2 against the clearly favoured Hungarian team at the Wankdorf Stadium in Berne on 4 July 1954. The crowning glory of his career was receiving the Coupe Jules Rimet after the memorable final. The World Cup book published by Agon states: "The captain was the heart, the soul of the collective - not only in the final. His almost 34 years were not noticeable to the leader of the German game. He excelled as a driving force, a provider of crosses and passes, and a corner specialist. He was also convincing from a fighting point of view."
However, the road to success in Switzerland was by no means straightforward, with setbacks and disruptions that could only be overcome with the cooperation of his fatherly friend Herberger, wife Italia, and his teammates from 1. FC Kaiserslautern and the national team: On 5 October 1952, the German national football team suffered a debacle against France in Paris. In front of ten thousand German supporters, who had come to Paris full of expectation, the Germans lost 1:3. However, it was not the result that was devastating, but the way in which the German team was shown up that day. They only defended, and at no stage of the game did they have a chance of winning. In the old Parisian stadium of Colombes, a wound seemed to have been torn open that could not be healed. Fritz Walter was knocked out, in a footballing way, but relentlessly. The Fritz played along, but endured the game like a nameless follower, and biting comments mingled with so-called understanding ones that sought to make the departure easier for a deserving veteran. There was talk of the end of an era. From Paris, however, Stuttgart sports journalist Hans Blickensdörfer received more understanding thoughts from Gabriel Hanot of L' Equipe: "Your Fritz went down because he couldn't cope with your expectations. In the Colombes stadium, there was also revanchism in the air, which someone like him can't do anything with. It went beyond football and overwhelmed him. For me, he remains an artist of the game, and, I am quite sure that he will prove that." Sepp Herberger believed the same, unflinchingly sticking by his captain and advising wife Italia: "Lower the blinds, put him to bed, and make sure he doesn't read the papers." After Paris, the brilliant but highly sensitive playmaker had asked the national coach not to consider him. But Herberger refused, saying, "I'll need you for years to come!"
Immediately before the tournament began in Switzerland, Fritz Walter and his 1. FCK reached the final of the German football championship in Hamburg on 23 May 1954. Their opponents in the final were Hannover 96, who had beaten VfB Stuttgart and Berliner SV 1892; the Lower Saxons were given no real chance of winning in Hamburg, and the defending champions, Walter's eleven, were clear favourites. They went into the break with a 1-1 half-time score and the Betzenberg eleven were outplayed in the second half, clearly losing 1-5. Fritz Walter left the pitch dejected with his head down and Herberger came in for a lot of criticism because of the five Lauter internationals in his squad. His long-criticised "monkey love" for the Kaiserslauterners, what was called the Kaiserslautern complex, was now held up to him in derision. With only three weeks to go until the start of the World Cup, the Kaiserslauterners were in desperate need of encouragement and comfort, especially sensitive playmaker and captain Fritz Walter. Here Herberger's ability to positively reinterpret disasters helped, he was prepared to make the best of any setback. For the World Cup, the Lauterer disaster in Hamburg came just in time for him. Herberger preferred to have men around him who, out of disappointment, anger and exasperation, were burning with rage to polish up their newly battered shield again, instead of resting on fresh laurels with contented frugality.
In Switzerland, after the 8-3 defeat in the group phase against World Cup favourites Hungary, there was a hail of scathing criticism of the team and massive criticism of the national coach, whose tactical personnel rochade was at that point neither guessed nor understood by anyone. The German fans booed their team at the top of their lungs and watched in despair as they were drowned out by the Hungarian combination and goal frenzy.
Fritz Walter, of all people, the closest confidant of national coach Herberger, was unable to take part in the first international match after the end of the Second World War, on 22 November 1950 in Stuttgart against Switzerland (1-0) due to an injury sustained in the representative match on 11 November 1950 in Ludwigshafen between South West and South Germany (2-2). For the player from Lauter, the national team appearances after the war began with the return match against the Swiss on 15 April 1951 in Zurich. Eight years and five months after his 24th international appearance on 22 November 1942 - in the midst of the Second World War - the exceptional Lauter player celebrated his return to the national team with a goal in a 3-2 win over Switzerland in Zurich. Sepp Herberger gave Fritz Walter the captain's armband, which Walter wore for the first time in Zurich. He became the extended arm of the national coach on the field, and the two also shared an intimate father-son relationship. The games against Norway and Saarland helped the team qualify for the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland. In his 39th international match, Fritz Walter scored two goals in a 5-3 win over Switzerland in Berne on 25 April 1954 - the "dress rehearsal" for the tournament.
In the semi-final match on 30 June in Basel against Austria (6:1), the Germans, driven by an outstanding "conductor" Fritz Walter, celebrated a true football festival. As the game wore on, the Danube players, who seemed static in many scenes, had less and less to counter their fast combination whirl. Austria had not only been beaten by the northern brother nation, but had been humiliated by all the rules of the art of football. And the main culprit for the dismantling was the German captain, euphorically celebrated by spectators and media alike. "We have never seen Fritz Walter so radiant," wrote some newspapers. "The greatest day of our eleven and conductor Fritz!" cheered the trade press, pouring a lot of colour on the headlines that caught the eye in big letters. On a personal note, Fritz Walter described the semi-final as his best ever international match and the best international match of any German team he played in. He was directly or indirectly involved in all six goals.
His friend and eyewitness Rudi Michel wrote about the captain's performance in the final: "For me it was the greatest game Fritz Walter ever played, not because it won the World Cup, not because the Hungarians were beaten. Fritz played without any inhibitions. He was the king on the pitch, there was hardly any talk of Puskas. Everything Fritz did was intuitively right and directional. I've always had big problems with the word 'brilliant', it's not part of my journalistic vernacular. But almost all the critics had said and written that about Fritz that day. He played so fantastically that I was afraid until the last minute that the Hungarians would somehow shut him down now, which they didn't. But maybe he just couldn't be taken out that day."
The sensitive genius, the sensitive football artist from the Palatinate, Fritz Walter, needed help. On a great day, he could light a fire and keep it blazing with resources not given to others. On the other hand, on bad days, he sagged quickly, prone to resignation. To protect his favourite, Herberger had sent a whole squad of confidants with him to the national team, half of the 1st FC Kaiserslautern: Werner Kohlmeyer, Horst Eckel, Werner Liebrich and brother Ottmar. The father-son relationship between Herberger and his captain proved to be a stroke of luck for German football: Walter, who was an all-round player, equally perfect in defence and build-up, implemented the coach's tactical instructions perfectly on the pitch as the head and idea man of the eleven, without being merely an auxiliary for the tactical templates or a satellite on the pre-calculated orbit of Herberger's course. Fritz Walter had it all, accepted every tactical specification of the coach, aligned his game accordingly - but then intuition triumphed. No one could teach him that. It was what made him and his game.
Helmut Rahn's 3:2 six minutes before the end of the game turned the underdogs into world champions and the players into national heroes: "We're a team again" was the tenor in Germany nine years after the end of the war. Even today, the team is known as the Walter-Elf.
Slow departure from the national team, 1956 to 1958
After the World Cup title, Fritz Walter struggled with illness and injuries. For Herberger, however, the idea that "his" national team could play without "his" Fritz was a nightmare. Just two days after the World Cup, he had said, "Fritz Walter in this fantastic condition is virtually indispensable for the next two to three years." And another two weeks later, when asked if "old Fritz" would continue to play in the national team, he replied, "Of course he will. We don't have anyone yet who could even come close to taking over his role. And if - and there will always be - he doesn't reach Swiss form in the next few games, perhaps, then he's still indispensable, as a spiritual centre, so to speak." However, the captain was absent from the four international matches following the World Cup victory from September to December 1954 against Belgium (0-2), France (1-3), England (1-3) and Portugal (3-0). It was bad that Fritz Walter sat in the stands during the match in Brussels on 26 September, which he reportedly did not attend due to illness. And that brother Ottmar announced that his brother would play against Liege two days later with 1. FC Kaiserslautern. The public got to know that things were no longer right between the captain of the world championship team and his sponsor, discoverer and friend Sepp Herberger. The back and forth went on for almost two years, sometimes the Germans played with Fritz Walter, sometimes without.
After the 3-1 defeat to Switzerland in Frankfurt on 21 November 1956 - the Herberger team had reached its lowest point in sporting terms - Walter withdrew from the national team. In July 1957, the national coach and his friend and pupil reconciled at the Duisburg-Wedau sports school. The participants in a special course to obtain a coaching licence, including Fritz Walter, who was also still in astonishing form, played football every evening and Dettmar Cramer, who was also playing, eventually phoned Hohensachsen to report on the evening's games. His conclusion: "No one in Germany plays as great as Fritz does." That didn't stop the boss on the Bergstrasse. He got on the next train and went to Duisburg. Secretly he sneaked into the sports hall and hid in the evening on the rank. Then, when he witnessed his favorite student dribbling rapidly through his opponents, he spontaneously applauded and shouted bravo. "Fritz, I've seen you're fit again. I think I'll be able to use you again," Herberger said. But he knew that it was not his doubts that had to be overcome, but those of the sensitive Lauterer. Freeing him from them had not been easy. For he was, after all, a man who had "climbed the highest peaks of the art of football and knew from his own experience about the thousand things that could interfere." The rapprochement between the two friends also remained their secret at first. But from then on, whenever Herberger drafted his team for the World Cup in Sweden in his notebooks, somewhere underneath or in the margin was a note: "In the secret compartment: Rahn, Fritz Walter. “
Walter made his first appearance on 19 March 1958 in a 2-0 win over Spain. Walter's comeback was controversial among the public because the 37-year-old was no longer thought to be able to play such a dominant role as he had in the 1954 title win. But Herberger did not give up on his plan to have new centre-forward Uwe Seeler line up alongside the experienced playmaker Walter. For Herberger, the name Seeler was always tied to Fritz Walter; he could only see the powerful Hamburg man as a forward tank who needed to be sensibly sent on his way and put into action. And that required the guidance of a great like Fritz Walter. Walter was again one of Germany's strongest players in Sweden, even if he was no longer captain as Hans Schäfer had been given that role in his absence, and led the team to victory in their group and eventually into the semi-finals against Sweden. There Germany lost 3-1, Fritz Walter having to retire injured for five minutes after a hard foul by Parling in the 75th minute; after his return he only dragged himself around the pitch as an extra, Germany playing the final minutes with nine players due to Erich Juskowiak's dismissal. The semi-final on 24 June 1958 was Fritz Walter's 61st and last international match, as he was unable to play in the third-place match against France due to injury. After the World Cup he declared his final retirement from the national team, in which he had made his debut in July 1940.
Fritz Walter had, in the opinion of his discoverer and friend Herberger, produced his greatest performance to date in Sweden. "With the timing of the World Cup approaching, he rose to a magnificent level of fitness," the national coach noted, "proving in what a unique way he had mastered the art of being in top condition and form at a given time. With this fact, Fritz has set an example without equal for all who strive for peak performance in sport and its maintenance over extraordinary time distances."
This makes Fritz Walter one of four players to have played for the national team for more than 15 years, surpassed only by Lothar Matthäus. With 33 goals in 61 international matches (30 of them as captain), Walter was the national team's record goalscorer until 23 June 1966, when he was replaced by Uwe Seeler.
Before the 1962 World Cup in Chile - Walter was already 41 years old, having ended his career in 1959 - Herberger tried once again to persuade his captain to take part in the World Cup when Walter visited Hohensachsen in the summer of 1961. "I want to show you something!" he enticed Fritz Walter. He fetched a routing folder from the filing shelf and laid it on the table. Fritz Walter recounted: 'Pages and pages of team line-ups for Chile!' He tapped his finger on a spot. I read: 'Centre forward Uwe Seeler', and in brackets underneath 'FW'. Speechless, I looked at the boss. 'You're not serious, are you?' 'Why not, Fritz? You'd still be valuable to me for the national team. You could play withdrawn centre-forward, the half-forwards pushed forward←!" But this time, the Lauter native wasn't playing. It had to go without him.
