This Tuesday marks 85 years since the mysterious death of Matthias Sindelarknown as ‘the Mozart of football’, a legendary Austrian attacker of the 1920s and 1930s, celebrated for his beauty on the field and, according to legend, his resistance to the Nazi regime.
On January 23, 1939, Cinderellashortly before her 36th birthday, was found dead in her bed with her lover, Camilla Castagnolawho was of Jewish descent and died a day later without realizing it.
An autopsy indicated that it was carbon dioxide poisoning, but doubts about whether it was an accident remain to this day. The police file of the Nazi authorities was lost.
Cinderellalike many Viennese of Czech origin, grew up at the beginning of the 20th century in the working-class neighborhood of favorite. He soon showed great talent for football, which he practiced whenever his job as a locksmith’s apprentice allowed.
From the 1924/25 season Austria there was a professional soccer league, where Cinderella He is one of its great stars. He was so popular that in the 1920s he advertised for brands of watches and yogurt.
The paper man
The midfielder of Vienna Austria He has become a vintage footballer, as good at scoring goals as he is at providing assists thanks to great technique and great vision of the game.
Fans named him ‘Der Papierene’, like ‘the paper man’, for his ability to dismiss his defenders with elegance and ease. That is also an allusion to his light body.
Chronicles of the time say that he “floated” or “danced” on the grass and when he had the ball the unheard of could happen.
The style of play Cinderella -elegant, technical and short pass- fits in Vienna Austriaassociated with the city’s Jewish intelligentsia and middle class.
Cinderella He is also the brain of what is called ‘Wonderteam’, the Austrian ‘dream team’ of the 1930s, who might have played in the final of the first World Cup on European soil had they not met in the semi-finals in 1934 with the host, the Italy fascist
The Austrians lost 1-0 in a match marred by irregularities and a goal after a foul by the striker Giuseppe Meazza to the Austrian goal, according to the visitors.
The Anschluss
When Austrian football is at its best, the so-called ‘Anschluss’, the annexation of the country by Germany Nazi, where the team and the league were dissolved and the Vienna Austriawhich was considered a “Jewish club”, intervened.
The new board banned club employees from congratulating the club’s dismissed Jewish president. Austria Vienna, Michl Schwarzbut Cinderella He broke that order. “They forbid you to greet me, but I always will,” he told her.
The footballer also refused to play in the team of Germany Nazi and refused to compete with the new team for world of 1938.
On the occasion of the annexation, a “fraternization match” was organized in April 1938, where the former Austrian team faced the German national team.
Austria won 2-0. cinderella, the captain of Austriastaged a mock celebration in front of the Nazi grandstand after scoring the first goal.
After a few months, Cinderella died “As far as we know, the accident was probably due to a boiler failure. It is true that the police file was lost,” he explained. Roman Horak, football historian University of Vienna.
“But dying in an accident is not very surprising and some writers have launched the idea that he committed suicide because he could not stand up to the Nazis or even that he was killed,” he added. Horak in statements to EFE on Vienna.
A myth
“That was a myth created in the post-war era – that of anti-Nazi Austrian patriots – at a time when Austria celebrities were needed to fight the Nazis,” he said.
After the Austrian professional league was abolished by the Nazis, Sindelar bought in August 1938, below market value, a cafe from its Jewish owner in Favoriten.
The owner of the cafe, Leopold Simon Drillis forced to sell his place and ends up being killed in a concentration camp.
“Apparently it is not so anti-fascist to buy coffee as to ‘Aryanize’ it, but that aspect has been overlooked for a long time because Austria I need legends of resistance,” he said. Horak.
“Sindelar was a simple man, without deep political views, and he thought he had found an opportunity in that cafe. It is true that his worker origins marked him and that he did not like the Nazis, but no this is the anti-fascist myth that was built later,” the historian sums up.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
