Qualla: German Football Museum

German Football Museum: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Kaufmann, CC BY-SA 3.0. The shoe is in a glass case. It is a black football boot, an ordinary one as boots go, with scuffed leather and the manufacturer's marks softening with wear. The placard explains: this is the right boot of Mario Goetze, worn on 13 July 2014, on the foot that struck the ball that beat Argentina in the 113th minute of the World Cup final in Rio. Germany had not won a World Cup since 1990. The shoe is, in a literal sense, the object that ended a 24-year wait. It is also the object that justified the existence of a museum the German Football Association had argued about for almost a decade.

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Image: Lucas Kaufmann | CC BY-SA 3.0

German Football Museum: Why Build It at All

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rasulnrasul, CC BY-SA 4.0. After the 2006 FIFA World Cup, hosted on German soil and remembered as the country's sommermarchen, the summer fairy tale, the German Football Association decided it wanted a permanent home for the sport's national memory. Fourteen cities applied. In May 2007 the DFB Presidium sh...

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Image: Rasulnrasul | CC BY-SA 4.0

German Football Museum: Three Winners and No Winner

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Kaufmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. The architectural competition that followed produced a result no one entirely expected. Of 24 submitted designs, the jury on 4 May 2011 awarded not one winning entry but three equal first-place awards: HPP Hentrich-Petschnigg from Dusseldorf, ARGE Petersen BWM from Dortmund, and ...

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Image: Lucas Kaufmann | CC BY-SA 4.0

German Football Museum: Bankruptcies and an Anonymous Two Million

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Solches, CC BY-SA 4.0. The original opening date was summer 2015. The opening did not happen in summer 2015. Several construction firms working on the project went bankrupt mid-build, slowing assembly through the autumn. The opening gala finally took place on 23 October 2015, and the museum opened to t...

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Image: Solches | CC BY-SA 4.0

German Football Museum: Living Memory, Including the Difficult Parts

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nicola, CC BY-SA 4.0. The DFB describes the museum as a living place of remembrance, and that phrase has to do some hard work. The German national team played its first matches under the swastika, gave Nazi salutes before the 1941 fixture against Sweden, and appears in the propaganda film shot at the ...

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Image: Nicola | CC BY-SA 4.0

German Football Museum: The Walk and the Rhinoceros

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lucas Kaufmann, CC BY-SA 4.0. Out on the forecourt, the Platz der Deutschen Einheit, a Walk of Fame runs across the paving with the footprints and signatures of German football's permanent names: Sepp Herberger, who coached the 1954 Miracle of Bern; Fritz Walter, who captained that team; Helmut Schon, who too...

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Image: Lucas Kaufmann | CC BY-SA 4.0