The incredible story of Bert Trautmann has been immortalized in a new film and the MailOnline has an exclusive first look at the first UK trailer and poster.
Trautmann was in the Luftwaffe before becoming a prisoner of war. He turned down a return to Germany, settled in England, fell in love, fought against a public backlash and eventually won an FA Cup while playing with a broken neck.
New film The Keeper, which will be released in UK and Irish cinemas on April 5, dramatises his story and the realities of his relationship with Margaret amid the tragic circumstances of his life.
The story of Bert Trautmann's life has been immortalised in a new film to be released this year
Trautmann was a prisoner of war, settled in England, fell in love and eventually won the FA Cup
Trautmann's story begins in the darkest of times. He was born in Germany in 1923 and, as was expected of someone of his era, he became a Hitler Youth after the rise of the Nazis. He joined because, as he put it: 'Growing up in Hitler's Germany, you had no mind of your own.'
He would serve in the Luftwaffe as a paratrooper and fought on the Eastern Front. While in Ukraine, he stumbled upon an SS massacre of Jews with a friend at the age of 18 and was terrified by the experience. 'Of course it touched me seeing this. If I'd been a bit older I'd probably have committed suicide,' he told the Evening Standard.
He earned five medals for his service but was eventually captured as the war came to an end and sent across Europe. He thought the Americans would shoot him. Instead, he ended up at a prisoner of war camp in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire.
It was there that years of brainwashing from Nazi Germany was undone. He was told of concentration camps and and shown a film about Belsen. In an interview with the Guardian a few years before he died, he said: 'My first thought was: "How can my countrymen do things like that?" But Hitler's was an utter totalitarian regime.'
The film, called The Keeper, tells his story from being a prisoner of war to FA Cup glory
The film also tells the story of his relationship with Margaret, who he met at St Helens Town
Trautmann, pictured with Margaret and their son John in 1955, when he was settling in England
The anti-Semitism that was endemic in Germany was eventually driven from his system too. He worked under Jewish Sergeant Hermann Bloch as a driver. Over time, he turned around years of manipulation and eventually came to the realisation that Jewish people were just other human beings too.
Eventually, his own attitude would be reflected in the way the Jewish community responded to him — which would prove crucial to his own football career.
Trautmann had played football for a youth team called Blau und Weiss in Germany and eventually got involved in PoW matches. He would usually play in defence. An injury in one game saw him swap positions with the goalkeeper. A legend was born.
He had been offered repatriation and decided to turn it down in order to stay in England, the country he had grown to love.
Trautmann was known as one of the only world-class goalkeepers in football at the time
While working on bomb disposal in Huyton, he played amateur football for St Helens Town. It was there that he met Margaret Friar, the club secretary's daughter. Friar and Trautmann would eventually wed.
On the pitch, he was becoming a star. A record 9,000 attendance at the local cup competition came on the back of the growing reputation of the man in goal for St Helens.
As Lev Yashin — viewed by many as the greatest goalkeeper ever — put it, 'There have only been two world-class goalkeepers. One was Lev Yashin, the other was the German boy who played in Manchester – Trautmann.'
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