Ballhaus Ost – soccer boy from planet Brillo

I was a shy boy who had to be fitted with glasses at a very early age to correct poor eyesight. I hated these glasses because they earned me the humiliating nickname of the Spectacles Snake and because they relegated me to the losers’ camp early on. Since I was very thin in the first years of my life and only the little girls in kindergarten accepted me into their dance group, I was only able to compensate for this shortcoming through irrational outbursts of anger, which usually occurred when I refused the disgusting lunch vegetables.

When I was punished in kindergarten and had to stand facing the wall while the other children ate delicious pudding, my little Thuringian heart was filled with pride. The others eagerly licked their pudding, but looked at me with secret admiration and respect because I occasionally made life difficult for Weimar’s prickly kindergarten teachers, who had learned their trade under the Nazis.

Ballhaus East

Imago/Matthias Koch

Frank Willmann looks at the football between Leipzig, Łódź and Ljubljana.

On the playground I still played a subordinate role in the boys’ group because I couldn’t kick. I was afraid that if I shot my head, my glasses would be pressed into my eyes forever. I had read in my Russian science fiction books that there would be such deformed aliens on the planet Brillo. I wanted to avoid this fate. The planet Brillo and its inhabitants, what a nightmare.

In the summer of 1970, all laws were repealed when Denis moved to our neighborhood. I immediately felt a deep affection and really wanted to become his friend. But to do that I had to learn to play football. Denis had been playing for Motor Weimar’s boys’ team for a few months and spent every free minute in his football boots. His tangled hair stood wild in all directions as he handled the ball, caressed it, and learned to control it. In a flash I realized: In order to become Denis’ best friend, I had to become a footballer.

I practiced behind the house every day with my father, developed ambition in gym class, ignored my glasses and noticed how my body and mind fell in love with the divine game. After a few months I was mature and from then on played soccer with the boys at school and on the playground. Denis became my best friend when my father signed me up for the Motor Weimar boys team. The trainer initially looked skeptical when I showed up with glasses, but my berserk game and a gift from my dad – a bottle of Zinnaer Klosterbruder from the VEB Edelbrände und Spirits Luckenwalde, 0.7 liters, 35 percent, for RRP 11.90 GDR marks – changed the situation.

On my first night as a soccer boy, I grew three centimeters and, like a football miracle, my vision in my right eye improved, so that from second grade onwards I was able to do without the terrible glasses in class. From that moment on I was part of it, at least that’s how I felt as a child and prayed to my football boots every night before I went to sleep that it would stay that way.