Thursday, October 05, 2023
The Hero Who Defected, Part 4
January 9, 1988. The former Magdeburg captain Wolfgang Seguin is at a luncheon reception in the West German town of Saarbrücken, where his old club colleagues have come to take part in a veterans' tournament. He suddenly notices that two of his compatriots are missing: the old attacking duo of Martin Hoffmann and Jürgen Sparwasser.
In the case of Hoffmann, the mystery is readily solved; the notoriously absent-minded "little Martin" got lost on the way, and trudges in a quarter of an hour late. But Sparwasser does not appear.
Seguin goes to Sparwasser's hotel room, along with the club masseur. There, he finds a letter from the former international, addressed to his club colleagues. Seguin reads the letter, and then turns sadly to the masseur. "We won't see him again," he says.
It had been no snap decision, no Alec Leamas-style climb over the Berlin Wall. Sparwasser's defection had taken a good deal of planning, and nearly came unstuck at various stages.
In 1987, in the wake of glasnost, the rules governing visits by GDR citizens to relations in the West had been slightly relaxed, and Christa Sparwasser was invited to a family reunion in the West German town of Lüneburg. By chance, a veterans' tournament was taking place in Saarbrücken at the same time. The Sparwassers sensed an opportunity.
Things almost went wrong immediately, when a district officer refused Christa permission for the trip. An enraged Jürgen gave the functionary a piece of his mind, adding some frank comments about the GDR in the process.
They thought they had blown it, but gave it another try. This time, a more pliant official treated them with unexpected courtesy, and the request was approved. Part One successfully accomplished.
Part Two was fraught with worry. A two-hour delay on the Magdeburg players' bus journey to West Germany understandably had Sparwasser in a panic. Had their plans been discovered? (They had discussed them on nature walks - the only safe way to do so in East Germany.) Seguin remembered in hindsight that his old teammate was unusually nervous at the time. But there was no official car to drag Sparwasser back to some distant location for interrogation; his passport was waved through along with the others.
On arrival at his hotel, Jürgen Sparwasser called his wife, using the agreed password. All was ready.
The next morning, the Magdeburg players went on a stroll through the city. Sparwasser pretended to have left some money behind in the hotel. Back he went, to be met there by an acquaintance from the town. After writing the letter - an attempt to explain his act to some of his closest friends, who he might never see again - he hopped into the acquaintance's car, and they were off to Frankfurt and freedom.
The next day, a grim paragraph appeared in the GDR official media. "The presence of a veteran team from 1.FC Magdeburg in Saarbrücken was used by anti-sports forces to poach Jürgen Sparwasser, who betrayed his team."
Sparwasser was long retired, and his defection caused few ripples; he was no Rudolf Nureyev or Viktor Korchnoi. But it was still a decision involving considerable sacrifice; the Sparwassers' daughter, then pregnant, was unable to accompany them to the West, but they obtained her blessing before taking the fateful step. They were not to know that within less than two years the Wall would be down, and the Sparwassers could be reunited after all.
Today, Jürgen and Christa Sparwasser live only a few miles away from both their daughter Silke and their grandson Philipp. After a dispiriting spell in management, the 1974 East German hero was able to pursue his interest in youth development, working in various academies and writing his own football primer for young players (which can be seen on his website). "When I'm on the pitch with children, I'm in my element," he remarked in an interview a few years ago.
He used to play in charity games with fellow luminaries of the past, but physically it's getting a bit difficult now. In his last match, he relates, he scored a very nice goal but almost injured himself in the course of the goal celebration (!). "That was a sign, that it was enough."
At least he finished with a goal. Perhaps not as famous as the one in 1974, but, as he put it, the technique was still there.
