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Bert Trautmann Order of the British Empire|OBE
(born October 22, 1923 in Bremen, Germany, real
name: Bernd Carl Trautmann) is a Germany|German
football (soccer)|football goalkeeper who played
for Manchester City F.C.|Manchester City for many
years.

He was born in Bremen. It was a time of much
troubles in this German city, but he had a good
life at that time. When he was ten he joined the
football club Tura Bremen, in the early years he
played on the left side of the midfield. From 1933
he had to join the Hitler Youth.

In the Second World War he was a paratrooper in
western Russia. He was captured by the Russians
and escaped, but was finally captured by the
British. The English greeted him with the words
"Hello Fritz, fancy a cup of tea?". He was brought
to POW Camp 50 at Ashton, near Manchester. In
football matches between two camps he always
played on the right midfield, but one day they had
no goalkeeper and so Bert tried it and performed
very well.

After the war he stayed in Britain and played for
the Liverpool County Combination club St Helens
Town F.C.|St Helens Town. When they went to
Manchester to play a friendly match against City
he performed his job very well, so the club
officials of Manchester City signed him and gave
him a good contract. The fans of City were not
happy about this transaction. Season ticket
holders threatened a boycott and various groups in
Manchester and around the country bombarded the
club with protest letters. 40,000 people went on
the streets of Manchester and demonstrated against
the signing of a German soldier, holding banners
like "Off with the German". But then a Jewish
rabbi in Manchester warned the demonstrators, "Not
only one man can be convicted representative for
one country". After his first matches for City the
troubles were forgotten, because he played very
well and he performed great saves, and soon he was
loved and admired by the English population.

One of Bert Trautmann's greatest matches was the
legendary 1956 FA Cup Final between Manchester
City and Birmingham City F.C.|Birmingham City at
Wembley Stadium. In the 75th minute Manchester
took the lead by 2 goals to 1 and Trautmann,
diving courageously at an incoming ball, was
knocked out in a collision with a Birmingham
attacker when he was hit in the neck. For the
remaining 15 minutes he defended his net, because
at the time there were no substitutions possible.
The final result was 3-1 to Manchester City, and
the hero of the final was Bert Trautmann, due to
his spectacular saves in the last minutes of the
match. On that day Lady Luck was on his side
— three days after that final a broken neck
was diagnosed after an x-ray at a hospital in
Manchester. 

He appeared in 545 matches for City during a 15
year period between 1949 and 1964. He had no cap
(football)|caps for Germany, because the German
manager Sepp Herberger did not call up German
players who were playing in other countries. He
won the Footballer of the Year Award in 1956 for
his FA Cup heroics, and was also in the FA Cup
final in 1955. In 1964 he finished his career with
a testimonial match|testimonial in front of a
crowd of 60,000 people, not bad for a German whom
no one had originally wanted. At this testimonial
Bobby Moore, the captain of the English national
football team|English national team, called him
one of the greatest goalkeepers ever.

He married a Manchester woman in 1950, with whom
he a son, who was born in 1951 and was killed in a
car accident a few months after the FA Cup Final
in 1956. He was divorced from his wife in the
1960s. After his career he tried to manage lower
division clubs, with little success. After this,
the German Football Association sent him as a
development worker to countries like Liberia,
Nigeria and Yemen. Since 1990 he has lived with
his second wife in a small bungalow on the Spanish
coast near Valencia. He visits his old club
Manchester City several times a year, and is still
an idol for all generations of City supporters.

On 28 October 2004 it was announced that Trautmann
is to be awarded the Order of the British Empire
for promoting British-German understanding through
football.

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succession box|title=FWA Footballer of the
Year|Football Writers' Association Footballer of
the Year|before=Don Revie |after=Tom
Finney|years=1956
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