FC Bayern Munich and Jewish Resistance to the Third Reich

The core of World Cup Finalist Germany’s superb national team is anchored in the Bundesliga’s champion club, Bayern Munich. This club, which had strong roots in Munich’s Jewish community in the early 20th century, has a rich yet obscure history of resistance to Hitler and the Nazi regime.

In the 1930s, Bayern’s Jewish president, Kurt Landauer, developed one of the best professional football training systems of its time, and is today known at Bayern as the father of modern German football. He and his players courageously resisted the pressures of the Nazi regime, which denounced Bayern as a “Judenklub,” and won the German championship in 1932. In 1933, however, Landauer was forced to resign as club president, and was later imprisoned for 33 days in Dachau.

Bayern, however, continued to support Landauer despite the repression; at a match in Zurich, the team saluted Landauer despite being under the heavy watch of the Gestapo. In 2013, FC Bayern Munich officially adopted Landauer as their honorary president, announcing that “Kurt Landauer, south German football pioneer, has returned from exile.”