Günter Grass: My Century of Football

8 October 2020 to 19 January 2021 – Special exhibition in our Arena

Günter Grass was a passionate football fan who regularly watched the ‘Sportschau’ programme on Saturdays and also went to the stadium. Grass supported the ‘smaller’ clubs such as SC Freiburg and St. Pauli. Football also features frequently in his work ‘Mein Jahrhundert’ (My Century). The special exhibition features valuable items on loan, such as Günter Grass’s original Nobel Prize certificate, manuscripts, watercolours and numerous other original exhibits belonging to the Nobel Laureate in Literature, as well as the original goal from the legendary World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany (1–7) in Belo Horizonte. The exhibition thus extends far beyond Grass himself. It sheds light on the historical and cultural dimensions of football in Germany.
The thematic
starting point for the special exhibition is Günter Grass’s work *My Century*. Three of the 100 stories deal explicitly with the subject of ‘football’. The year 1903 and the first final of the German Championship, the year 1954 and the ‘Miracle of Bern’, and the year 1974 and the ‘German-German brotherly duel’ (from the perspective of the GDR spy Günter Guillaume).

At the heart of the special exhibition are various manuscripts and drafts of these three stories, which illustrate the writer’s working methods (early handwritten versions, typewritten versions and computer-typed versions, each with handwritten corrections and annotations). This central display case is complemented by three surrounding installations focusing on the years 1903 (substitute’s bench), 1954 (the bench), and 1974 (Guillaume’s prison cell), which place the protagonists and plots from the stories in a socio-political context.

The special exhibition is framed, amongst other things, by four walls, each of which reflects Grass’s personal connections to football and goes beyond the stories in *My Century*. Topics discussed include: how did he come to be interested in football? His fondness for underdogs and down-to-earth clubs. The year 1990 as the ‘sell-off’ of East German football. Well-known football poems by Grass and other authors. And Grass as a ‘fan’ of women’s football.