Of all the Fuchs siblings I think Gottfried is the weirdest name choice. There are some well-adjusted people out there (e.g. Siegfried Sassoon) who have gotten along just fine despite the role Dick Wagner played in their naming. But I suspect that this is not universal for all names.
Richard and Walther are very common names that don't stand out in a 20th century German- or English-language context. Senta is a bit of an offbeat choice but as far as I understand she's pretty heroic character. Siegmund I am more skeptical about but you've got Sigmund Freud alive at the same time so incest is no longer the primary association. Plus he later changes his name.
But Gottfried??? Do you think every time he commits a foul the Canadian team turns him into a goose?
Gottfried Fuchs (1889-1972) was a Jewish German footballer. He played for Düsseldorfer SC, Karlsruher SV and the German National team as a striker.
In 1910, he became Deutscher Meister with Karlsruhe.
He currently holds the German National Football Team record for most games scored in a single game, having scored 10 (!) goals during the 1912 Olympic game against Russia which ended 16:0. Also, he is still the footballer with the highest goal/game ratio (13 goals in 6 games) of the German NT.
Gottfried Fuchs was born in 1889 in Karlsruhe into a well-to-do Jewish family that owned a wood trading company. One of his brothers was the architect and composer Richard Fuchs. He started his football career in 1904 at Düsseldorfer SC, but played for Karlsruher SV from 1907. KFV was one of the 86 clubs that founded the DFB, the German football association, and one of the most successful clubs at the time, winning the South German Championship and the Kronprinzenpokal (Crown Prince’s Cup) multiple times, as well as winning the German Championship in 1910 against Holstein Kiel. Here, Gottfried Fuchs formed a legendary attacking trio along with Fritz Förderer and fellow Jewish player Julius Hirsch (murdered in Auschwitz, probably in 1943).
Gottfried Fuchs also made six appearances for the German National Team and became its first Jewish player. With his 13 goals, he remained the National Team’s top total goalscorer until 1930.
However, his football career was interrupted with the start of the First World War in 1914, where Fuchs served as an artillery officer and was wounded four times. He tried playing again after the war ended, but then started working for his family’s company instead. Because of that, he moved to Berlin in 1928. There, he was a member of a sports club until he was excluded because of anti-Jewish legistlation in 1935.
In 1937, he and his family managed to escape to Switzerland. Switzerland did not allow Jewish refugees to stay permanently, so they went on to France. However, in 1939, Fuchs is declared an “enemy alien” in France because of his German origins and put into an internment camp. When German troops attacked Belgium (and shortly before they invaded France), Fuchs and his family managed to flee to Canada via the UK. Here, he will stay for the rest of his life except for brief trips to Germany and takes on the name Godfrey Fochs.
Fuchs became largely forgotten, mostly because the Nazis had attempted to purge every trace of Jewish people and Jewish accomplishments from the German history. There were people who remembered him, though. Sepp Herberger, who is mostly known for being the German NT coach during the 1954 World Cup win that was titled “The miracle of Bern” (and also to a lesser extent for playing/coaching Tennis Borussia Berlin), called him one of his idols and “the Franz Beckenbauer of his time.” Herberger and Fuchs were friends and kept in contact via letters.
When the Munich Olympic Stadium was opened in 1972 with a game against the Soviet Union, Herberger asked the DFB to invite Fuchs as a guest of honor. At the time, Fuchs was the only living Jewish person to have played for the German National Football Team. The proposal was discussed at the DFB, but ultimately declined due to “not wanting to set a precedent”. Apparently, the DFB did not want to pay the 1.760 Mark for the flights from Germany to Canada and back.
Herberger wrote this result to Fuchs with deep disappointment, but the letter did not reach Fuchs in time. He died on 25th February 1972 in Montreal. Since the 2016/17 season, there is an award named after Gottfried Fuchs that is given out by the football associations of Baden-Württemberg for clubs, players or initiatives in youth development that foster diversity and tolerance in the game. The slogan of the award is “For humanity and tolerance – against racism and antisemitism.”
Pictures:
In the first picture, which was taken to celebrate the German Championship of 1910, Gottfried Fuchs is sitting in the first row on the left, his Jewish teammate Julius Hirsch is sitting in the first row, 2nd from the right.
In the third picture, he is wearing the KSV jersey.
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If you want to read more about interesting football figures with a connection to Berlin, check out my “The life of” series, which is apparently a thing now. It’s not particularly structured or anything, it’s just me finding people with a connection to both football and Berlin.
If you want to read more about Berlin/East German football, check out my Berlin Football tag and my series on Union Berlin
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