With the help of a walker, Walter Frankenstein enters a VIP room in the Berlin Olympic Stadium on Saturday. The capital derby between Hertha and Union will later be played on the lawn. The 98-year-old is an invited guest of honor. He sits at a table with a sign with his name on it. He proudly lets himself be photographed with it. He orders a red Berliner Weisse and a currywurst. Satisfied, he raises the glass and says: “Now I’m back in the Olympic Stadium.”
Hertha fan for 85 years
Frankenstein was there for the first time in 1936 for the Olympic Games and witnessed, among other things, how Adolf Hitler refused to shake hands with the exceptional Afro-American athlete Jesse Owens. And yet he always likes to come back to this place to cheer on his favorite club, Hertha BSC.
Frankenstein has been a Hertha fan for 85 years. “I think I’m one of the oldest, if not the oldest,” he says with a grin. He found his love for the blue and whites at a time that was also the worst of his life. Frankenstein was born in Flatow, a small town in present-day Poland. As the son of Jewish parents, he was no longer allowed to go to school there. With the mediation of his uncle, he therefore moved to Berlin on July 27, 1936 to an orphanage for Jewish children on Schönhauser Allee.
In the orphanage he met another boy who was a Hertha supporter and absolutely wanted to take him to the stadium. At that time, the capital club was still playing in the “Plumpe” in Gesundbrunnen. “I saw Hertha play and I was thrilled. I came from a small town and football conditions were small. Then I saw a team from the first division play football, that was something completely different,” he recalls.
Bad and good sides of his life in Berlin
He also remembers city derbies from the old days well. Hertha BSC against Tennis Borussia for example. “Both teams were big clubs in the premier league at the time. The game came on the radio on Sunday and we sat there listening intently,” reports Frankenstein. He tried to go to the stadium as often as he could. But that was not easy for the Jewish boy. “In itself that was already forbidden for us, but I always found someone who got tickets,” he says.
Berlin is the city where he experienced the worst but also the best of his life. There he met his wife and it was here that his eldest son was born. His mother was also arrested there in March 1941 and deported to Auschwitz, where she was later murdered by the National Socialists. Frankenstein had to go underground and hide in the big city. He spent most of his time in wrecked houses, old cars, friends’ apartments and in the Grunewald. This is how he survived the Holocaust. Today he lives in Sweden, but he still clings to his old homeland. “I push the bad things away. That’s in the past. I’d love to come back to Berlin,” he says.
In 2014 he received the Federal Cross of Merit for his work as a contemporary witness. And even today he is still working on various projects – also in football. “It is very important to me that football is sport, joy and camaraderie and not enmity. That’s why I keep coming here and talking to young people and football fans,” he says.
Frankenstein always wants to remain loyal to Hertha
And when he returns to Berlin, then of course he doesn’t miss the opportunity to support his old lady Hertha in the stadium. In the city derby against Union, however, he sees one on Saturday 4-1 defeat his club. “It’s happened a few times when I’ve been here in the Olympic Stadium that Hertha has lost,” says Frankenstein.
In the current sporting situation, tears could still come, he says. And it’s not the first time he’s seen Hertha drop down a class. Frankenstein has experienced a lot with the blue and whites and always wants to remain loyal to the club. On his bedroom door in Stockholm would be a Hertha shirt with his name on it, a scarf and his membership card. His membership number is 1924 – the year of his birth. “If you’ve been a fan of a club for 85 years, you don’t leave it, even if they slip. Hope dies last,” says the 98-year-old.
Broadcast: rbb UM6, April 10, 2022, 6 p.m
Source: rbb