Soccer & the First World War

Gems from our Collection

Photograph of a soccer team

Harry Engel (1892-1950) with the FC Bayern Munich, Munich, September 1916
© Jewish Museum Berlin, donated by Alfred Engel, photo: Jens Ziehe

On 15 February 1940, after a four-year wait for an American visa then a successful escape from Nazi Germany, the Engel family, hitherto of Munich, reached the safe shores of Manhattan. In the family’s luggage was memorabilia that the then 13-year-old Alfred Engel was to donate to the Jewish Museum Berlin, decades later, from his father’s estate. It includes rare photographs from the 1910s, a time when Harry Engel (1892–1950) was an active soccer player at FC Bayern Munich.  continue reading


STÜRMER-Bars

Chocolate bar with the word "Stürmer" on itI thought I was losing my visual cognition yesterday noon, at the Jewish Museum’s canteen, when a colleague bought a candy bar which looked like a snickers in every way except for the writing, which spelled STÜRMER. I turned out to be healthy. Consulting the website of chocolate makers Mars, Inc., I learned that STÜRMER-bars are part of a “happy day edition” campaign to boost sales during the European Football Championship. Sometimes, we get paranoid at the Jewish Museum, so I was quite relieved to find that not everybody associates STÜRMER (which means “striker”) with the notoriously anti-Semitic 1920s and 1930s publication…

Naomi Lubrich, Media