[Translate to Englisch:] Sonderausstellung: Post vom Chef – Herbergers Briefe an die Weltmeister

4 July to 26 August 2019 – Special exhibition in our Arena

We are happy to make this special exhibition available to interested parties as a travelling exhibition. Further information can be found in this PDF file.

Horst Eckel, the last remaining ‘Hero of Bern’ himself, opened the special exhibition ‘Mail from the Boss – Herberger’s Letters to the World Champions’ at the German Football Museum

The correspondence, published for the first time, shed a whole new light on the legendary national coach’s communication strategy and on the close bond he shared with his players, with whom he won the German national football team’s first World Cup title in Switzerland in 1954. 4 July marked the 65th anniversary of this historic sporting event.

Horst Eckel recalled: “As the youngest player in the team, I had a sort of father-son relationship with Herberger. Incidentally, if you received a lot of mail from the ‘boss’, that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. Often, it meant something wasn’t quite right. Fortunately, I received more praise than the opposite.”

Museum director Manuel Neukirchner said at the exhibition opening: “Sepp Herberger deliberately chose to write personal letters to the team – between training camps and international matches – for his constructive messages, as this allowed his messages to have a lasting impact on the players. The international players usually kept the letters and repeatedly reflected on them as personal guidance for their role within the team.”

Eugen Gehlenborg, DFB Vice-President and Chairman of the DFB Sepp Herberger Foundation, added: “Herberger’s letters impressively reflect his extraordinary footballing expertise as well as his psychological and pedagogical empathy. His approach as a coach remains a model to this day.”

The special exhibition, organised by the German Football Museum in cooperation with the Sepp Herberger DFB Foundation, subsequently went on tour as a travelling exhibition. An accompanying book was published as part of the ‘Kleine Fußball-Bibliothek’ series by Edition Deutsches Fußballmuseum and is available in bookshops and the museum shop.

Numerous books have been published to accompany this special exhibition and to explore other aspects of the German Football Museum. If you’re interested in the stories behind the history, we hope you enjoy reading them.

You can find all the accompanying books published to date here.

A Small Football Library: ‘Mail from the “Boss” – Herberger’s Letters to the World Champions’

A Small Football Library: “Mail from the ‘Boss’ – Herberger’s Letters to the World Champions”

The legendary manager Sepp Herberger (1897–1977) was a master at expressing football wisdom in simple terms. He packaged his messages with a touch of humour in entertaining sayings such as ‘The ball is round’ or ‘The match lasts ninety minutes’. It went virtually unnoticed that the 1954 World Cup-winning manager was also a highly gifted letter-writer who used the written word as a strategic communication tool for managing his team. The extensive archive of the DFB Sepp Herberger Foundation contains hundreds of letters from the national coach to his players, in which this iconic figure of German football addresses his charges both as an understanding mentor and as a strict teacher. The letters, published for the first time in this volume, offer a completely new insight into the close bond between Sepp Herberger and the 1954 World Cup-winning players.

Manuel Neukirchner (ed.)
170 pages
German Football Museum Edition
Format 110mm x 183mm
ISBN 978-3-667-11756-4
14.90 EUR