Fräulein Müller

Renate Breß was born 1937 at the Borsigplatz. Way back her surname was Müller and she only wanted one thing: to play football. She became part of a women’s football team named Fortuna Dortmund 55 and - unlike their male counterparts - the players had problems to find a location to play, as the West German Football Associaton had banned women form their pitches.

So their manager, Josef Floritz, had the idea to turn women’s football into a kind of touring attraction: he founded the Women’s Football Association, put together a women’s national team formed by Breß and her teammates, supported by female players from Munich, Nuremberg, Essen and Oberhausen.

This team competed weekly, played throughout Germany and against women’s teams from the Netherlands or England. Yet they never got compensated financially. The management payed for travel and accommodation with the money gained from entrance fees - sometimes they were given a little pocket money for a drink at the truck stop, one day a small purse as a keepsake after a win - “but we never actually got paid,” says Breß.

The women from Dortmund have been out and about in the matter of football for ten years when suddenly Josef Floritz died and the team broke up. Renate Breß was 30 years old at the time, married and had a child.

As late as autumn of 1970, the DFB abolished the ban on women’s football. In 1982 the first international match of a German women’s national team took place. In 1989 the German women’s team won the European Championship - and with it a coffee set.

More about the life story of Renate Breß on the Website of Nordstadtblogger.

Her football boots and the small silk purse are in the BraUturm.

Text: Daniela Berglehn
Translation: Matthias Fabry
Photos: private / Repro: Susanne Schulte, Leopold Achilles